Tony Karrer's eLearning Blog on e-Learning Trends eLearning 2.0 Personal Learning Informal Learning eLearning Design Authoring Tools Rapid e-Learning Tools Blended e-Learning e-Learning Tools Learning Management Systems (LMS) e-Learning ROI and Metrics

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Innovators' Dilemma in Learning/eLearning

I blogged about this before on LCB - The Innovator's Dilemma of Learning, but the recent discussion in Product Vendor Blogs - Where are They? suggests to me that we still are not getting the fact that we are likely facing exactly the kind of situation that is known as the Innovator's Dilemma - in other words, incremental improvements won't get us to what is needed. A leap is needed. And most leaps don't come from within large, established players.

If you look at what's happening with Web 2.0, the information explosion, needed changes to education, etc., etc., ... we all are hearing about the need for something different. Yet, we are seeing mostly incremental improvements. If anything, I would expect right now that the biggest shift will be towards more free, open-source solutions that provide roughly the same functionality that are in the commercial tools today. That's what happens when you start to stagnate and there's feature parity.

The fact that the discussion around Product Vendor Blogs and Innovation came back that it may be there but is hidden suggests that they aren't going to be the source. Does anyone from Saba, SumTotal, Adobe/Macromedia/eHelp, Lectora, etc. disagree? What will be the source?

No comments: