This New Business of Learning

The New Brunswick learning industry is getting together in a couple of weeks to discuss several business opportunities. I won’t be there due to other commitments, but that’s what happens when you’re a free agent – you can’t be in two places at one time. I’m adding my comments before the meeting and I think that Godfrey Parkin’s recent post is a good place to start:

Corporate learning has to follow the Google’s “search & connect” model instead of the General Motors “produce and sell” model. Training purists sneer at “just-in-time” help systems, insisting that people need to know how to do things themselves. They undervalue collaborative learning networks, regarding them as somehow cheating. They fervently believe that adult learners must be led, child-like, through pre-determined learning paths mapped out and controlled by a central authority. They gauge the worth of an employee by his or her ability to survive on a corporate desert island, bereft of books, colleagues, mentors, databases, systems, or communication.

Jon Husband recently sent me a paper that synthesised some of the major forces of change in our digital lives. These include greater Internet access; the two-way web as the operating system; and the influence of open source business and development models. Taken together, they are giving individuals much more control and creating millions of separate markets. We’re all individuals and we all have access to the world’s information and can connect with pretty well anyone we want (think long tail). The basis of all business models has changed. The basis for the training business is changing too.

I have already talked about Google as the best learning platform around. No LMS can compete with it. Open source is also changing business models (witness Google again, or IBM or Novell), including service companies. A learning services firm has to stay ahead of the curve because even services can become rules-based and modular, making them ripe for competition from areas where wages are lower.

Lately, I heard that the current enterprise software development model is fundamentally flawed. I think that the same is true of many business principles that are taken for granted. That’s why everyone is looking for the next big thing. The key, in my opinion, is looking at the world with fresh eyes and listening with fresh ears. I wish good vision and hearing to my colleagues.