As 2015 draws to a close, all eyes in the L&D industry are looking ahead to predictions of disruption. Careful observation at the broader economic trends and industries offering products and services similar to L&D reveal three key drivers of disruption: millennials, uberization and apps. Looking even closer, not surprisingly, disruption is coming from the familiar three areas of the way business is done: people, process and technology.
Millennials: In the people/process/technology equation, people are the most important as without them the best processes and the snazziest technology will generate very little value. According to a report by Beth Ann Bovino, Chief Economist at Standard & Poor’s, by 2020, 80 million millennials will be spending in excess of $1.4 trillion and, will not only surpass the boomers as the largest living generation, they also will be the most educated generation in U.S. history. Yet, they seem to be at risk of losing their learning compared to their peers globally. Millennials in the U.S. show relatively weaker skills in literacy, numeracy and problem solving compared to their cohort globally. By 2020 millennials will comprise 50 percent of the economy. According to the 15 Facts about Millennials report published by the White House, millennials value community, family and creativity in their work. This is an opportunity for the L&D industry to lean in closer and really listen to understand the needs of the new leaders of the economy who really value values and want to only do work that makes a difference. The L&D industry will need to really focus on the learning needs of the millennials and deliver solutions to help them learn and grow so they create economic value commensurate to their anticipated $1.4 trillion projected spending habits.
Uberization: People use processes to generate value by delivering a product or a service. While the uberization of work, or generating value through freelancing or part-time work, is not a new concept, with Uber it has grown exponentially. According to an article by Douglas McMillan of the Wall Street Journal, Uber employs over 4,000 full-time and 156,000 part-time drivers in 36 countries, 124 cities generating an estimated $2 billion in revenue in 2015.
Today, Uber is valued over $41 billion. Uber has eliminated the middle man through a smart phone app which connects people who need a ride at a particular time and place and people with cars that are willing to drive them. The learning industry also provides the service of learning, connecting the learners needing to learn and the providers of such learning. Traditionally the L&D industry has been providing public enrollment learning and customized learning across various modalities including classroom, live online and asynchronous where the learner had to go to the provider. With uberization, learning as a service will be increasingly created at the time of need by freelancing instructional designers and subject matter experts reaching the learner on their mobile device with short, personalized, bite-size pieces of learning to be consumed when and where needed.
Apps: In 2016 the mobile app industry is expected to generate services valued over $143 billion. According to the Mobile Marketing Association, in 2015 the mobile ad spend in the U.S. alone was $70 billion and $220 billion globally. According to Morgan Stanley analysts reporting in Dec. 2015, wearable tech is expected to become the fastest ramping consumer technology, outstripping even smartphones and tablets. The numbers are staggering and continue to grow as almost everything is now available on a mobile device. Just as always technology has been the connector between people and process, here, apps are the connector between millennials and uberization. The app industry has an immense opportunity to capitalize the relative gap in mobile app L&D and really transform learning from a three-day classroom to a 15-minute pearl of wisdom implementable, real-time on the job.
There’s a vast opportunity for the L&D industry to capitalize on these mammoth trends by leveraging the need of millennials to learn; borrowing from the economic model of uberization and fully embracing the transformative power of the mobile device app to transform the people/process/technology equation of L&D.
The question is who will be the front runners of the L&D disruption in 2016 and beyond?
