Today’s digital and technologically savvy society has affected the way we do business and with it every industry, including learning and development. The way we learn is being disrupted. According to Clayton Christensen, disruption is a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources manages to challenge the incumbent business by addressing unmet customer needs. In the L&D industry, the unmet needs of the learner are being addressed head on by several technology companies. Below are three such companies, in different stages of market maturity, actively and successfully disrupting how learning is accessed by and delivered to learners at the individual and aggregate level.
Recently, as part of an Association of Talent Development Event, I had the opportunity to moderate a discussion with key executives from these three companies to uncover their strategy and approach to making learning easier for the learner and their employer. The companies are: Instrucutre, Scrimmage and Pathgather.
Instructure, headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT, went public in November 2015 with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. They focus on making cloud-based learning management software. According to www.crunchbase.com the way they do this is by engaging, measuring and improving employee learning and engagement in real time. Instructure started from K-12 with Canvas to make teaching and learning easier. In 2015 they launched Bridge, to focus on simplicity of software to make corporate learning and development simple, mobile and fun.
“Simplicity is at the core of what we do,” said Jared Stein, vice president of research at Instructure. Major competitors according to crunchbase.com are Docebo, Moodle and Blackboard.
Scrimmage is a growing company with offices in Minneapolis, New Jersey, Philadelphia and London. They are a self-funded company, a start-up that never raised external funding. They focus on making mobile learning mainstream by creating learning and collaborating technologies, learning content and custom design. According to Derek Lundsten, CEO of Scimmage, mobile learning is at the core of the learning equation. Scrimmage is leading efforts in broadening their footprint and reaching beyond borders to enhance their ability to partner with organizations and provide well-rounded learning and engagement solutions through their front-end partnership teams and back-end creative and developer talent.
Pathgather, is headquarted in NYC. Active in the aggregator side of L&D, Pathgather focuses on providing organizations with a single point of access for internal and external learning, empowering employees to curate learning for one another and motivating employees to get recognized for their achievements.
“Our focus is a grassroots approach to learning whereby we empower the learner and link performance to learning,” said Eric Duffy, CEO of Pathgather.
It will be fascinating to observe these and many other companies seeking to disrupt and change the learning paradigm and see who does what in 2020. We will be watching.
