Unstucking learning: in search of new dominant designs

My previous article "Learning got stuck in itself" became my second most popular blog post in only a few weeks' time. That's of course very nice for my ego and my statistics, but more than that it means there is something there to further explore...  In short my flow of thought was that we generally feel "your father's" learning and development methods are not adapted to our times anymore, that we know what we want to fix, that we have many tools and experiments in place based on those insights, but that we still haven't made a big jump probably because we never redesigned the ecosystem of Learning & Development. I suggested to look at Business Model Canvas generation to do just that. Some have read it as 'yet another article' to whine on what's wrong without providing solutions. Well, THE solution isn't there, but I'm confident we are on our way 'along the messy road of innovation' to find new ones that will become new dominant designs... Over the remainder of this month I'll post some more articles on the same theme, with some suggestions on how to look at L&D through new eyes in order to 'unstuck' it.

Here is the summary of this article:

• In the search for new dominant designs for L&D
• we'll need to overcome the obstacles why we don't change
• and just like the latest entrants on the L&D space
• fill our petri dish with new elements and experiment and tweak

In search of new dominant designs for L&D

A dominant design is a term from technology innovation. When a new technology comes along, many designs based on it enter the market but after a few years, one of these designs tends to 'win' and become the de facto standard of the market place. This dominant design is not necessarily the best one in terms of technology, but it is the one that will have the winning 'business model' in my opinion. It will be the one that best fits the entire ecosystem of the market place. If you feel like it you may take your time machine and go back to the eighties when Mac and PC were fighting to become the de facto personal computer standard (and the associated business models of closed and open) or revisit some articles on the merits of both blueray and whatever-the-other-one was more recently.... Below are some images of cars before the dominant design settled in.

I think the phenomena we see in technology innovations is similar to what we are currently experiencing in the learning and development field: we are in search of new dominant designs -in terms of business models- for learning, that better fit the current times. Contrary to the 'winner takes it all' of technological innovations, I do see a few dominant business models living next to each other, and then some more in niche areas. The current dominant design for learning is the classroom. The current dominant design for e-learning content is a page-flipper. Once dominant designs settle in, it sets the expectations in the market place: this is what a car looks like, and this is what learning looks like.

In x years' time, I hope we'll look back at this period and our search for new dominant designs for L&D and wonder why we couldn't see what in hindsight was so obvious... What will these dominant business model designs look like?

PS: when I write 'new dominant designs for L&D', I mean the process of learning and development, not the function or department per se.

Overcoming why we don't change

So why don't we change? It's a question we ask when we fail to see the necessary behavior change after people graduate from our interventions. (Hint: not changing is the default behavior hard wired in our nature.) Let's apply the same question to our own L&D functions: why can't we change, not from the inside out, and not when the external forces around us demanding us to do so become overwhelming?

Humor is a good way to name elephants in the room, so here is one cartoon from Mimi and Eunice that might explain some slagging on our part:

Here is how Hans de Zwart explains 'why we don't change' in a recent slideshare presentation (and your 'word of the day' omphaloskepsis):

Learning from the Outside

View more presentations from Hans de Zwart

Here is a hilarious (well, I ROFL'ed anyway) YouTube video on "we need some e-learning" on how the dominant design and expectations require us to come up with the same old same old, even when we know it won't work. Recognize it?




On a more serious note, go read the post "controversy of informal learning" Jay Cross made looking back at the publication of his book on informal learning and his disappointment on the uptake of it since. He writes:

What happened? Not much. Companies continued to put almost all of the training budget into schooling novices. They acted as if the natural way of informal learning didn’t exist. [...] I think I’ve figured out why.
Business people confuse learning with schooling. For the better part of twenty years, school indoctrinated us that formal learning was the legitimate way to learn, that teachers and books provided the knowledge one needed to master, and that grades were the measure of accomplishment. [...] Nonetheless, most corporate training departments are modeled on schools. They deal with learners who are enrolled. They provide top-down classes and rigid content. They take attendance, administer tests, and certify participation. They let non-training learning fall between the cracks.

That reads like: L&D has tried to incorporate informal learning in its existing business model and logic. (For example, I can't count the conversations I had about 'managing' informal learning.)

My thesis: we haven't changed because while we stay in the false comfort of our current business model, resistance makes more sense than switching.

The entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have entered the arena now

But the models are changing... If it is 'omphaloskepsis' that is the problem, then the (partial) salvation will come from new entrants who look at the market through other eyes and force us to do the same. With every new entrant in the learning and development or education space, new models are tested and we are shaken. Over the years, software vendors entered the market with their LMS platforms, publishers defended their stakes in the market and created their own platforms, media companies saw their chances to leverage their enormous media archives, tablet makers attempt to put themselves in the center, etc.
What is the state of the learning at this point? In recent years, we cracked the code of massive scaling. First via open initiatives like MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and also with widely popular initiatives like Khan Academy and similar initiatives such as academicearth.org or uopeople.org... Recently, prestigious USA universities at both coasts scaled their courses for the masses (we are talking of 5 or 6 digit figures!) with spin-offs like Coursera or Udacity and the recently announced edX initiative. Both initiatives got backed from the new entrants in the learning space: the venture capitalists have arrived!

It's not a coincidence we are now taking up the vocabulary of the venture capitalists: we talk about learning innovations, dominant designs and business models... all very much the core language of entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists that support them. They wouldn't be entering the space if they didn't see both a need and value in it. Read a balanced review on the pro and cons of these new entrants in George Siemens' post: remaking education in the image of our desires. For a chronological overview of the series of events that is reshaping the educational landscape read Dan Pontefract's post (be sure to read his view on the underlying business model near the end of the article too!).  What are the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists currently changing? Their business model is/might be about scaling content delivery based on brand image and having a fraction of people pay for the added value of a certificate on top of the learning experience. We'll see it as it evolves, because as a given in the entrepreneurial world the value generation and capturing is a very dynamic process, and far from set in stone. Business models are constantly tweaked and adapted with the events in the market.

Whether or not you agree with the current reshaping of higher education, it does make sense to adopt and try out the same approaches and reshape L&D on our own: innovation, experiments, business models,...

What can we put in our petri dish?

If we overcame our own barriers to change from within, what can we as L&D folks put in our petri dish? What experiments can we do to find, tweak and nurture learning models that are a better fit for today's organisational needs?

I increasingly believe we need to look holistically, and business model canvas generation is an excellent method for that (thank you entrepreneurs!). By looking through the lens of a business model, we're looking at the overall picture of the entire ecosystem and make it all fit.

How do we get the inspiration of what to throw in our petri dish? First, start by looking through new eyes, away from the navel. Here are some suggestions for looking with new eyes I'll elaborate on in the next posts for the remainder of this month:

• flipping: take a given concept or habit and turn it upside down
• vocabulary: change the words of the game and you enter a new game
• from here to there: define new goals and work backwards
• metaphor: learning is like a ....
• other eyes: play the role of a different profession and have a look

Petri dishes are also found in lab environments. Similarly, I'd protect these experiments from the 'resist and kill' spirit inside L&D by putting them in an incubator environment of some sorts. When they are proven, scale rapidly...

That's enough for now.

Here is the red thread of this article once more:

• In the search for new dominant designs for L&D
• we'll need to overcome the obstacles why we don't change
• and just like the latest entrants on the L&D space
• fill our petri dish with new elements and experiment and tweak