Disruptive Forces Converge in Our Industry; We All Stand to Win From the Resulting Innovation

I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of disruption, and its applicability to our industry. One of the many reasons our corporate training industry often is described by analysts as a second tier industry is that the business we are all in is actually thought of as a bunch of separate industries (LMS, content development services, instructor outsourcing, sales training, etc.). We often do not see the disruptive innovation in front of us, because we are seeking to categorize it rather than look at its impact. Yet disruptive innovation is happening right now in our $100+B industry (en toto), and that innovation is fundamentally changing the entire conversation.

We often think of innovation only in terms of technology, yet much of the innovation (albeit enabled by technology) is actually showing up in dramatic changes in process, services, requirements, and approach. Just think- how different are the conversations you are having now, compared to five years ago? How much has your charter changed? The fundamental change driving this innovation in our industry right now is... (wait for it...) that results actually matter. No longer does training measured by the pound count for anything. Training, or enablement, or learning, or knowledge transfer- all means nothing if a demonstrable result is not achieved. How do I deliver the end result with the least amount of input, while delivering the maximum possible output?

We are now entering a period of great disruptive, and discontinuous innovation, and none of it (by its very nature) is being led by the big names you hear about every day. My friend and former boss, Mike Fauscette, has a great primer on the nature of innovation, and his post has great applicability to where we are right now. Disruption makes us think differently, and requires us to transform everything or we get lapped.

Let's just hammer out the list of current massive disruptions to the learning industry organism (a list by no means stack ranked, nor complete):

1. The current economy changes everything (well, duh... as Wayne would say). But this isn't your father's belt-tightening dot com downturn. 15% budget cuts? No problem- suck it up, tighten the belt, cut the fat, ride it out. 40% budget cut? Okay, now we have to do everything in a dramatically different way, otherwise we are paralyzed (and then 100% budget cuts could be out there if we don't figure this one out). Forget the ol' 'do more with less', we have to do less with less, and yet still deliver the same or often greater impact. So I drop the scary hypothesis on our industry: the only way we can grow is to use the drastic budget cuts to transform our results, our purpose, and our charter. Pain is the catalyst to cure the ills of how we do what we do, rather than just continuing to treat (or mask) the symptoms. Deliver more and greater results, but do less with less. Surgically remove the pointless exercises, no matter how cool or how sacred. Reimagine and rebuild everything else.
2. Learning technology has become commoditized. Technology is required, but (unlike ten years ago), the most fundamental innovations in this area are actually the ones with the lowest price. I can yammer on all day about the upside-down pricing and TCO of bronze-age client-server LMS products, but the web has literally changed everything in the technology toolset for our business. Think about it- the latest tools, platforms, development environments, and delivery technology all cost a lot less than old stuff, require little to no IT support, and you can be up and running for the enterprise in as little as 30 days. Prototype, test, scale, test, add more users... lather, rinse, repeat. Only the web-based tools and apps allow this cost-effective iterative approach, and it is the web-based apps that are delivering simpler technology at a price point of 50-70% less than the old guard. Tastes great? Less filling? Yup.
3. User-generated content and social networking/media cannot be stopped. There, I said it. You can't stop it. Don't even try. But you can ride it, use it, leverage it, empower it, filter it, and make it work for good rather than evil. Trying to control social networking is like trying to control the wind; you can only use it to increase your velocity and continuously tack toward the goal (yep- that's a shameless plug). And yet here is the dirty little secret about the power of social learning for your enterprise--- you don't have to build anything but the core business content anymore! Every one of you could kill 80% of the training content you create every year, harness the power of the social enterprise (another good one here from Mike), and focus only on the core stuff. Guess what- the net result is you have delivered MORE and delivered more impact. Don't just think build and deliver; think harvest and propagate. The revolution in our industry will not be televised; it's happening right now on Twitter and Facebook.
4. Outsourcing is dead; long live smartsourcing. I have worked for learning outsourcing companies, and I have been a consumer of leanring outsourcing for the big companies where I worked. "Throwing it over the wall" to the vendor to save some dough simply doesn't save enough dough anymore. Sure you can save a few percentage points, but real economies of scale (and thus increased marginal efficiencies) come from the productization of learning services, not T&M contracts. Traditional outsourcers can help you save some money doing what you are doing, but they are never incented to help you understand what you should not be doing at all. These companies aren't evil; they are just encumbered with business models focused on utilization and billable hours. For example... smartsourcing does not mean things like doing book production for less- smartsourcing means getting entirely out of the book production business and cutting a royalty commit deal with some publishing house in exchange your company's blessing and authorization. Smartsourcing is a series of deals, resource reallocations, one or two-way partner commitments, and a resulting total smaller business footprint to meet your goals. Outsourcing is about delivering the same business for less money; smartsourcing is about delivering a much leaner, more effective business for a lot less money.
5. Code is cheap, but knowledge is for rent. The line between products and services is getting fuzzy (and this is good for all of us). Products can be rented by the month. Services are often turned into products. The fastest growing company on the NYSE is technically a 'services' company, even though we all think of it as a web applications company. Subscription changes everything. The equilibrium point between domain expertise, simplicity, and scale is where the value is. Knowledge acquisition remains a meritocracy, but knowledge transfer has become democratized. Specific domain knowledge can almost immediately be turned into a useful toolset- SME's (finally) scale. Proprietary knowledge is useless unless it is shared- and the money is in knowledge distribution, rather than the knowledge itself.

So we can leverage these massive and fundamental disruptions in our industry to deliver the desperately needed innovation in our industry, or we can just go on perfecting the irrelevant. We can, and we must, deliver training and enablement organizations with much lighter footprints, more nimble approcahes, and more effective results. Think for yourself. Question the current dogma. Deliver more impact by saving money. Do less with less, and yet more effectively deliver the results. This industry will never be the same, and you have never had more power. Carpe diem.

~ posted by Glenn Oclassen on 27 Jul 09
   tagged as: business of learning, change, disruption, innovation

 

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