Corporate Learning Laggards?

Last week I moderated a Technology Council event on Web 2.0 in Los Angeles. We had great speakers from IBM, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Move.com (Homestore) and others. There were lots of interesting things to be taken from the presentations that relate directly to what's happening in corporate learning, but one of the high level trends that made me think came from Matt Glotzbach, Head of Products at Google Enterprise.

The point that Matt made was the corporate IT has gone from leading technology innovation to being a laggard that adopts after consumers. It used to be that your corporate computer, your Internet connection, the applications that you used, all were better than what you used at home. Now the opposite is often the case. He attributed some of this to the fact that consumers have direct, easy access to services and because of Software as a Service, innovation happens really fast and gets to consumers quickly. Corporate IT just can't keep up and maybe shouldn't because they need to police what is done. Matt also pointed out that often Corporate IT makes different choices for itself than it does for the rest of the corporation. For example, they may have access to sites or have installed desktop search or have other things that they restrict from the rest of the corporation.

What's interesting in eLearning is that it used to be that corporations were way out in front of what was happening in the consumer space and even farther ahead of what I saw in academia. Back in 1993-4, I lead the development of a project for Lexus salespeople that had video-based selling skills simulations, an online reference, tools, and more. It was truly a ground breaking project that was ahead of what you would find in consumer multimedia learning.

Interestingly, as we transitioned to delivery over the Internet - did I mention that Lexus Labs was delivered on six CD ROMs so it came with a CD ROM changer? - we took a big step back. We've also stepped back as we look at doing things more quickly at lower cost to keep up with the pace of change. And now as things begin to transition to eLearning 2.0 what I see happening in the consumer space and in academia is far ahead of what we are seeing in corporations. Individual instructors are able to incorporate blogs and wikis into their classroom experiences much more readily than in the corporate land.

Is that our destiny in the world of eLearning 2.0? Is Corporate Learning going to continue to be a Laggard?