Thanks for the thought provoking post and the reference paper Harold. Our business is currently seeing and experiencing the very things mentioned. As a back office function for a major corporate, the majority of the roles and the work have been (or in the process of being outsourced). Similarly, entire functions such as the call centre is being reduced with customer management technology implementations that mean a 'self service' approach to customers finding answers on the web. For the learning and development team, a massive reduction in staff and a push to 'explore new ways of learning' is placed on the 'stunned' team that were so used to rolling out facilitator led classes...but no longer.

Recently I did a MOOC (Gamification on Coursera) just to see what the fuss is about and it will be interesting to see how these grow and are used. At the moment they seem to be dedicated to academia but I wonder if there would ever be a MOOC designed for generic courses that corporates use (sales, leadership, customer service skills etc) and how that model would work - or if it would work? Regardless, I told my team about these MOOCs and now four of them have signed on to do an e-learning course through Coursera starting next month as we are encouraged to do our own professional development and the boss doesn't complain when it's free (!!)

I've been asked to provide some advice around the future strategy of L&D for this team and your workshops, articles and posts like this one have made me reflect on what we could do as a business. We have a massive cultural change and expectations to set with our clients but also bigger ones with our own team members but I'm all set for the challenge and will be proposing the Social Learning Centre as a place to start for our L&D members. Thanks again!