After having recently merged with Fredericton’s LearnStream, Provinent (of Toronto, with offices in Fredericton & Charlottetown) is now merged with US-based Vitesse Learning. This consolidates the e-learning content development field even more. We’ll see if bigger is better in the next months and whether the new company hires more people or jettisons extra staff. The merger means that at this time only one major e-learning content developer, Innovatia, has its head office in New Brunswick. Other companies with learning content production facilities in Fredericton include Ireland’s PulseLearning, US-based SkillSoft and local EngageInteractive.
Addendum: after re-reading this post I’d like to note that Provinent’s head office never was in Fredericton. The point I was trying to make is that New Brunswick has a number of production facilities but few head offices and I’m not sure if this is best for the long-term sustainability of the local learning industry.
Is New Brunswick becoming only a cheap labour provider?Hi Harold,
I think it’s extremely important in terms of positioning. E-learning contracts have always come from elsewhere even when the NB e-learning industry was in its heyday. However, it was important for the NB companies of the time to not only make money but make the NB industry grow. It had tremendous impact on strategic decision-making such as office locations, staffing and investment. This decision-making power has now moved out of the province. Then, when decisions will be made as to whether expand, or shut down, a NB production facility, they will be made on the basis of NB’s global competitiveness in terms of quality and price. That’s a whole new ball game.
Yan
To lead or not to lead?Yes, that is the question – can we sustain a learning industry if we are only playing a supporting role? The biggest companies in the region are branch offices of larger ones. Are local skills that are being developed enough of a competitive advantage to sustain the industry? Companies such as SkillSoft, Vitesse and PulseLearning have their senior consultants and many of their C level executives outside of NB.
We are currently trying to rebuild the NB e-learning industry after the Dot Com bomb of 2001. If and when the industry takes another downturn, will we have enough critical mass (of IP, experience, etc) to create the next learning industry?
Just heard on the radio that Provinent went bankrupt. Do you think this is a harbinger of e-learning’s future in New Brunswick…
Cheers
I had heard a rumour about this yesterday, Marc. As I said in 2005, and earlier, putting all of our eggs in one basket (large production-oriented companies with head offices outside NB) will not foster a resilient industry. We need greater diversity of companies and non-profits.
Also, it’s been obvious for quite a while that there is no future in just developing commercial learning content. Building community, connecting people and providing context are what we should focus on.
Marc/Harold – Provinent was unsuccessful because they didn’t understand what they acquired when they merged with VL. Provinent acquired a successful, growing, premium provider with a blue chip customer list. Far from being a ‘large production oriented company’, VL achieved that status by providing value based solutions to business leaders. Provinent attempted to serve that customer base with commodity priced learning development services that failed to address real business needs. It was Provinent that tried to serve the market in a production-oriented mode; and yes, as a NB based company, they considered cheap NB labour among their strengths. Regrettably, one of their strengths was not recognizing opportunities to return value to customers and help them do business more successfully. The customer base defected.
There remains tremendous opportunity to build successful businesses based on delivering quality solutions to commercial concerns.
eV, I completely agree; “commodity priced learning development services” are a losing business proposition.