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September 24th — 26th, 2008
Hotel del Coronado, Coronado, California

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Features

Published May 2008

Learner-Driven Content: The Next Wave in Development

  David Wilkins

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The line between student and expert is being blurred as employees in all positions and at all levels are contributing to learning content. In many organizations, this shift has produced tremendous value for the enterprise.

In every facet of our lives, the role of the traditional expert is undergoing significant change. Consider the role and function of a bank teller or a tax preparer, a librarian or a cashier. Many of the day-to-day tasks associated with these jobs are quite different today than they were as recently as four or five years ago. On the corporate side, HR professionals and support-desk personnel also have seen fairly dramatic changes in their traditional responsibilities.

In all of these cases, there has been a significant increase in automation and a transfer of ownership from the experts to the user, or consumer. For bank tellers and tax preparers, the automation is ATMs and tax software. For librarians, it’s Google and Amazon. For the cashier, it’s self-checkout lines. For HR professionals, automation comes in the form of self-service HR and user-generated content, while for the support desk, automation is present in online forums, ratings and self-service support sites such as GetSatisfaction.com.

These trends are just starting to hit the general corporate workplace. An internal wiki at Cisco yielded more than 400 new business ideas in just 18 months, resulting in the identification of more than $3 billion in new market opportunities. Ideas can be submitted by any employee.

In 1999, Goldcorp put all of its mining data online and rewarded external contributors who could help them find more gold on their existing property. The result? They found 8 million ounces of gold and went from being an underperforming $100 million company to a $9 billion company that is widely regarded as a model for the industry.

During the 2007 Super Bowl, Doritos ran ads that were created by the general public rather than ad agencies. Google, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and Home Depot all use YouTube as part of their recruiting strategy, in most cases relying on content created by employees rather than their HR departments. Ernst & Young also has a significant Facebook presence.

In all of these cases, one thing is clear: This is not expert-generated content, at least not in the traditional sense. How many of Cisco’s 400 new ideas came from experts? The answer probably is “all of them.” Anyone confident enough about the content to create or edit a wiki page probably is an expert on that particular subject. What’s less clear, however, is whether the “expert” in question is recognized by the company. What’s more likely is that these are experts who are known to their peers but not necessarily to the hierarchy. The role of the expert has changed.

The distinction between expert and nonexpert has blurred significantly in recent years and will continue to transform profoundly as our workforce demographics shift from baby boomer to Generation Y. With each new success story about user-generated content, users and employees see mounting evidence that expertise doesn’t just come from the anointed few, but from peers and colleagues, too. Increasingly, consumers and employees are realizing that “we” are the experts. This shift in perception has profound implications for learner-driven content within an organization.

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