The demand to grow the best breed of talent is on the CEO agenda but still many CEO’s struggle to resolve the talent shortage for their businesses. There is a fundamental disconnect between how executives value the importance of talent management versus the amount of involvement and rigor they have in the talent management process. This is one of the major findings from Growing Global Executive Talent, a global online survey of 412 executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Development Dimensions International (DDI). Click here to download the PDF of the full report. According to this survey, 55% of respondents said that their organization’s performance was likely or very likely to suffer in the future due to insufficient leadership talent. One of the more compelling quotes in the survey findings was from a CEO in support of investing more time in talent management. David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands, shares this in the survey; "Show me a good leader and I’ll show you a good business." A number of key findings emerged from the survey that can be highlighted and referred to as evidence of the importance of talent management, namely: 66% of the respondents from the survey are making talent management a core business strategy equal to or more important than other business priorities. Some CEO’s are increasingly playing a hands-on role in expanding and fine-tuning their talent management initiatives. For example, Mr. Majdi Abulaban, vice president of Delphi Packard Electrical Architecture, said he is now spending 50% of his time on talent management, up from 35% two years ago. 55% of respondents said their firm was fair or poor at identifying talent and communicating promotions. Strong talent management depends on clear communication where potential candidates understand where they need to improve and what they need to accomplish in order to be in line for advancement. Only 20% of respondents said they spend time on managing leadership talent or involved their human resources department as a "true strategic partner." One thought for Human Resource professionals: Be proactive in involving yourself as a business partner. Waiting to be "invited" to assume this role will clearly not work for you. One suggestion: develop an enterprise people development plan, this will give you the strategic view into your organization’s talent needs. Furthermore, given the fact, that just one in ten CEO’s said they reviewed leadership talent with their Board of Directors, this appears to be another opportunity for Human Resources professionals to begin to engage with their senior leadership in putting talent management on the agenda for the Board of Directors. And having an enterprise people plan may be the first request of the Board. So, the survey asks what is preventing companies from adopting a more "rigorous" approach to talent management? Some common strategies mentioned in depth in the survey findings include: Develop an integrated talent strategy - meaning do not patch together various programs, but rather adopt one comprehensive strategy requiring leaders to serve both as executive sponsors and champions of the talent strategy as well as active participants in the development of talent. Identify talent potential early - the demand for strategic leaders is outgrowing the supply and this results in the need to identify and invest in internal leaders on a regular basis. This requires a routine scanning of the skills, knowledge and talent of the organization, and isolating leaders who show a combination of strong performance and leadership potential. Use innovation and take "calculated risks" in executive development - push your learning vendors to use innovative design approaches including metaphorical learning experiences - a term referring to a learning method that takes participants out of their familiar surroundings and gives them the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new world as they go through a set of learning exercises. So what are your barriers to gaining traction with talent management inside your organization? Please share your experiences with our growing community. Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook Technorati Tags: talent management, talent retention, talent leader, global talent, ceo

The annual Business Week survey of the 50 Best Performers is out on newsstands. Here are a few things to think about: Is your company on the list? What are the companies on the list doing in terms of people development? First the top list of companies: 1. Coach 2. Gilead Sciences 3. Allegheny Technologies 4. Verizon 5. Questar 6. Apple 7. Colgate-Palmolive 8. BJ Services 9. Abercrombie & Fitch 10. MEMC Electronic Materials 11. CB Richard Ellis Group 12. C.H. Robinson Worldwide 13. IntercontinentalExchange 14. UnitedHealth Group 15. CME Group 16. Starbucks 17. Robert Half International 18. Avon Products 19. Cognizant Technology Solutions 20. Sunoco 21. Goldman Sachs Group 22. Exelon 23. Amazon.com 24. Rockwell Collins 25. Nucor 26. Varian Medical Systems 27. AT&T 28. Autodesk 29. T.Rowe Price Group 30. Bed Bath & Beyond 31. Pepsico 32. Expeditors International of Washington 33. Lehman Brothers 34. Google 35. Schlumberger 36. Best Buy 37. IMS Health 38. PNC Financial Services Group 39. Constellation Energy Group 40. Sherwin-Williams 41. Microsoft 42. Precision Castparts 43. Titanium Metals 44. Moody’s 45. Coca-Cola 46. Barr Pharmaceuticals 47. TJX 48. Centurytel 49. Nvidia 50. Exxon Mobil A few observations: The list is created based on financial measures. Business Week selects the top performers in each of 10 sectors based on two key metrics: return on investment and sales growth over the past three years (and for the financial service firms, their return on equity and growth in assets). But as we know that only tells a small part of the story. What about the commitment these companies are making to innovation and people development? One of the companies - Lehman Brothers is in fact doing both, all the more remarkable given the current chaos in the financial services and sub-prime marketplace. This year Lehman Brothers ranked number 33 on Business Week’s Top 50 list and while down slightly from the previous year, the company continues to make a commitment to people development. One of the interesting innovations in learning used by Lehman Brothers is Metaphoric Learning, a learning method that takes participants out of their familiar surroundings and gives them the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new world. Metaphorical Learning is not just another fad. Rather, this learning method, as pioneered by Duke Corporate Education, ties learning outcomes to key business priorities. At Lehman Brothers, metaphorical learning is used to develop relationship building skills among investment bankers who become part of a pit crew changing tires trackside at a NASCAR race while building key skills sets that focus on developing execution skills and how to be a member of a complex team. To date, over 500 Lehman executives have participated in metaphoric learning experiences and according to Lehman Brothers there has been a relationship between those who participate in these learning experiences and an increased retention rate. Is this method widespread? Currently it is focused on niche populations in financial services and medical fields but is gaining traction among a broader segment of workers even New York Police Department has used metaphoric learning to build observation skills among police detectives. Is it effective? The key to using metaphoric learning is to be sure it is linked to strategic business goals, the specific skill sets you want to build in a target audience and then measure the outcomes such as increased employee retention, revenue and productivity. If you have experience with metaphoric learning please share your experiences with us. Technorati Tags: metaphorical learning, Duke CE, Lehman Brothers, Business Week Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

This week, I spoke and attended the CLO conference entitled "Orchestrating Change: Leading Organizations with Learning." My presentation focused on Brave New Learners: Millennials and Beyond. The presentation addressed such issues as: What impact will all of this have on the four generations currently in the workforce? Do Millennials really learn differently? Will FORTUNE 500 companies ever create their own Facebook for internal use? There is no doubt that online social networking is weaving itself into the fabric of all four generations in the work force, defined as: Veterans born between 1925-1945 Baby Boomers born between 1946-1965 Gen X born between 1965-1977 Millennials (Gen Y) born on/about 1978 or later It was the discussion about these topics that really got us into a lively and engaged session with lots of questions and frank dialogue: The four generations of the workforce should really be defined attitudinally (i.e., what they are involved in at work and how they have embraced social networking, rather than by their chronological age). I, for example, am a Baby Boomer, but think, act and engage like a Millennial. Despite the huge popularity and widespread adoption of social networking websites like LinkedIn and Facebook, the concept of social networking has had a difficult time finding traction in the business world where IT managers fret about security issues, and rightly so. Instead, the "early adopters" of social networking for learning and human resources are creating "Facebook-like" applications behind their firewalls. They are also thinking about what they expect from social networking and how it will benefit the organization. In addition, they are asking themselves "What do we want ‘increased connectivity’ to bring to our business? What does success look like for the recruiting, sales and learning departments?" A new category is emerging in the social networking landscape called "socialprise," a mash-up of social networking and enterprise computing applications. Look for more examples here from companies like Select Minds and InsideView. Finally, and perhaps most compelling, the audience for the session at CLO was overwhelmingly comprised of Baby Boomers. One Chief Learning Officer from a Fortune 100 firm came up with the most honest assessment of why FORTUNE 500 firms will continue to be slow to adopt to social networking: "I know I continue to feel guilty when I am on sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. I feel that I am not working, not producing those power point presentations or answering those emails that I have stacked up on my in-box." But then another member of the audience shot back: "That would never be an issue for Millennials. They have social networking in their DNA and know connecting to colleagues and using the latest technology to stay on top of industry trends is part of working in the 21st Century." But let’s remember as we explore how to incorporate social networking into the enterprise that it’s not about the technology. This is still relatively new to Fortune 500 firms - the larger issue is to have a clear vision for what you want to accomplish and build both online and offline solutions that allow increased connectivity for your employees, customers and business partners. Technorati Tags: social networking, CLO, Facebook, LinkedIn, Millennials, Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

There is so much talk lately about how your learning organization or human resource organization should utilize blogging. Questions abound like: What strategy should the learning and human resource department have with regard to blogging? What guidelines should be in place for how your employees blog, i.e. what topics to stay away from and how to use blogging as a way to build stronger bonds with your customers? Often I hear comments like, "my leadership is afraid of blogging," or "we have strict rules allowing a small number of senior people to blog and our department is not included in this small number of senior executives." It seems to me there are some larger questions you should be addressing like: Does your CEO know what a blog is? Should your CEO have a blog? Has your CEO blog been reviewed in the blogosphere? Do your top three competitor CEO’s have blogs? Are these competitor CEO blogs a corporate communications tool or does the CEO really post about significant issues? Interesting questions to ponder as more companies begin experimenting with social media to develop trust, improve communications and increase vehicles for employee development. To find out about what your competitor CEO’s are doing in terms of blogging, I recommend you go to TheNewPR CEOBlogsList Wiki. To date, 58 of the Fortune 500 companies have blogs. But in most cases, the blogs are company blogs, many maintained by corporate communications departments (like Clorox, which has one that answers questions about stains), rather than CEO’s penning their own blogs. But there are notable exceptions and two CEO’s come to mind that regularly post to their blogs. One is Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun Microsystems who posts on a regular basis about his interactions with customers around the world. The other is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and CEO of HDNet. As you continue to research what strategy to adopt and to create a set of guidelines with regard company blogging, I recommend consulting a survey recently conducted by content security company, Clearswift. The survey was conducted among 939 corporate decision-makers on matters related to corporate blogging, wiki’s and participation in online networks/forums and other aspects of the so-called Web 2.0. Some highlights from the survey found: 20 percent of IT and business decision-makers don’t have a policy governing appropriate use of the Internet, including social media sites 39 percent of IT and business decision-makers consider social media to be relevant to today’s corporate environment, while 36 percent do not see social media as relevant to their businesses 13 percent of organizations are not aware of social media and have no policy on it So before your begin to develop a policy for your Human Resources and/or Corporate Learning department regarding blogging, wiki’s and other social media, first find out what your company policy is regarding the usage of social media at work. For Human Resource and Corporate Learning professionals, I find the Sun blog policy to be highly informative. Finally, let’s continue a dialogue on CEO’s as Bloggers: Should more CEO’s be bloggers? Should this be part of their job in next 5 years? Should CEO bloggers participate as part of a corporate communications strategy or use blogging to begin a "real" dialogue with customers? And how can Human Resource and Corporate Learning departments "experiment" in their own departments about innovative ways to leverage social media at work while maintaining security standards? Technorati Tags: CEO, talent management, social media, Sun Microsystems, HDTV, Human Resources

I am always on the "hunt" for interesting dialogues happening on the Web and the following one about Blackberry caught my eye. It starts out with a request for using a Blackberry for purposes of training a population of Attorneys and focuses on the tools that will allow this to happen seamlessly. I am looking for the ability to send an email to all our Attorneys via 
BlackBerry (1000+) that contains a link. Upon clicking the link a multimedia 
file will either download and play or stream. This multimedia file 
can be actual video or a PowerPoint-type stack that contains audio and automatic slide change. The critical 
factor is that the population of Attorneys do not have to open up a separate application on 
the BB thus making using the BB for learning as easy and seamless as possible. So far, one leading suggestion is to try Blackberry Video Generator. Now, let’s say you are trying to build a case to your management on why you should be exploring "Wearable Learning For Senior Executives." Here are some examples to refer to: There Have Been Record Shipments for PDA’s According to Gartner, the PDA market (Personal Digital Assistants) showed record shipments of 17.7 million devices, an increase of 18.4% from the previous year. Gartner defines a PDA as a data-centric handheld computer weighing less than 1 pound that is primarily designed for use with both hands (collectively known as "BlackBerry’s," or "CrackBerry’s" for the addicted). Examples include the RIM BlackBerry 8707v, HP iPAQ 69xx, Nokia E61, Motorola Q, T-Mobile Dash and Sidekick. So there is a huge installed base of senior executives who "wear" a potential training device. Some companies are already piloting using Blackberry for Training There are a number of on-going pilots of companies already exploring using the Blackberry for training. Often the target markets are senior executives who use BlackBerry 24X7 in their job. One that comes to mind is a series of pilots being rolled out in 2008 targeting Merrill Lynch Investment Bankers. The objective is to provide corporate mandated training to Investment Bankers over Blackberry. What’s interesting is how the pilot is organized: Merrill Lynch is using their internal Learning and Human Resource staff as the first pilots to work out technical issues as well as test out the ergonomics of programs. Research points to the need for heavy investments in recruiting high paid professionals as compared to investments in training high paid professionals. Deloitte Research finds that the typical US company spends nearly 50 times more to recruit a $100,000 professional than it will invest in their annual training once they are on-board. What has been your experience in using the BlackBerry for learning? Share it here with our readers. Email this | Save to deli.cio.us | Digg this | Link to Facebook

Last week, I was interviewed at length by News & Observer, a regional newspaper operating in North Carolina for an article entitled "The New Work Study: Companies Invite Degree Programs, Employees Benefit." The essence of the article was the growing trend among corporations to bring degree granting courses on-site at the company location. Actually, I have been following this trend since 1994 when my first book on corporate universities, entitled Corporate Quality Universities was published. But now I can see that this is the moment for companies and universities to truly enter a new period in creating innovative and customized partnerships bringing accredited learning to the masses. As they say, "timing is everything." What we are experiencing now is a global talent shortage. This is finally fueling the demand for companies and universities to re-think how they do business with each other. The importance of retaining talent is highlighted in the following headlines taken from across the globe: United States • Every 10 minutes someone in the Baby Boomer Generation (born between 1946 and 1964) turns 60 years old. Europe • 38% of UK employers are struggling to fill positions due to a lack of staff with the right skills India • By 2010 India will experience a shortfall of nearly half a million qualified IT workers. Companies spend millions of dollars on tuition reimbursement and now they are demanding to become true "customers" of the higher education system by creating flexible and innovative programs for their employees. And the results as profiled in the News & Observer article are worthy to take note: 25% of Blue University "graduates" (i.e Blue University is the corporate university of Blue Cross Blue Shield and is the entity that partners with universities) have experienced lateral or upward mobility in their careers within a year of graduating from one of the on-site university programs Company turnover was 16% in 2007, but was just 9% among Blue University graduates So why has it taken so long to create these on-site and, often times, customized corporate/college programs? These programs require a new mindset among both heads of human resources and learning as well as deans of universities. Corporations must realize that the days of passively funding tuition assistance programs are ending. Instead, in its place, companies must manage a global network of universities that meet specific criteria just as they manage a network of healthcare providers. And for universities, there exists a new set of challenges—new ways of delivering curriculum, new mandates to "customize" curriculum that is aligned to strategic business priorities and importantly, new ways to communicate the business outcomes associated with investing in talent. So, as companies look to "retain" and grow talent internally, they will focus on re-writing the playbook in working with universities. Perhaps the day has finally come for Customized Corporate-College Partnerships. What do you think?

Managers frequently cite completing performance appraisals as one of their least favorite tasks and that is often an understatement. But quietly there is a movement afoot to "consumerize" business software. This means that software is being designed and tested by "user experience teams" with the goal of making software "intuitive," engaging and, importantly, free of training. This consumerization of business software, a term coined by Gartner, Inc, will have a tremendous impact on our employees. Increasingly, employees on-the-job will come to expect software to be as easy to use as creating a profile on Facebook or an account on Ebay. They will no longer tolerate training courses or training manuals that go through endless "how-to-use" scenarios. Instead, they will expect an "IPod" experience — elegant, fun and engaging. Take a moment to think about the software your department uses, can you say this? Often the norm is one where employees endure lengthy training or spend hours poring over reference manuals only to be more confused than when they first downloaded the program. One company leading this movement is SuccessFactors, a company providing performance and talent management solutions to over 3 million employees in 1,750 companies. Looking at the current solutions and those about to be released, it seems clear such sites as Facebook, Ebay and Amazon have inspired them. The latest offering of SuccessFactors, called SuccessDirectory, is a Web 2.0-based collaboration solution that enhances a company’s Employee Profile section in its Performance Management solution to include social media technologies like tagging and social networking. Let’s assume for the moment that you work on a global team and collaborate everyday with team members across the globe that you have never met in person. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create a profile here where you could share your educational background, work history, post a photo of your choosing, list your professional training, languages you currently speak, ones you want to learn over next few years, books and music you enjoy, hobbies and some information about your family? In fact, creating and sharing your profile, could really help you get to know your virtual team members better and may even lead to doing your job better. Why will this movement be so important? Well, if you have a teenager, like I do, you know how they download new software or personalize their cell phone. Do they ever read the manual? Of course not. They just dive in and use it. With 80 million Net Gener’s about to enter the workforce these Millenials will demand their professional networking be similar to how they build their personal networks. But as the head of Talent Management or Learning at your organization, here are some questions I would ask a company touting an enhanced Performance Management solution: What has been the research with Millennials in using performance management solutions with a social networking component? Do these programs impact recruitment and retention of Millennials? Can anyone across the entire organization access my profile or is it like Facebook where you can grant access? What is the process for updating these internal profiles if the new data is outside taking a new course? Let’s say I just learned a new language "on my own time" but updating this may be the last thing I remember to do. But if I know that updating my internal profile will impact my chances for promotion, then I am motivated to review my profile on monthly basis and update with every new skill, course, etc. Share your experience with integrating social networking into performance management. What has been the reaction of your employees (especially the Millennials where social networking is in their DNA)? Technorati Tags: millennials, net generation, successfactors, social media, social networking, web 2.0 Email This | Share On Facebook | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us

The May issue of Harvard Business Review is now off the shelves but the cover story, entitled, "Leadership’s Online Labs," by Bryon Reeves, Thomas Malone and Tony O-Driscoll has become a buzz among Chief Talent Officers and Chief Learning Officers. If you are like me and did not grow up playing multiplayer online games also known as MMORPG’s (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) it is important to give you some context. Multiplayer online games are a large and growing market with current estimates topping 50 million users. World of Warcraft alone has 10 million players who each pay a subscription fee of $15 a month. According to the Palo Alto Research Center, participants’ play an average of 20 hours a week, their average age is 27 years old and 85% are male. They are not exactly your typical corporate employee, but the question is this: What can we learn from how these virtual teams form to solve a problem and then disband? Questions about what the participants do when they play these games has caught the interest of corporate talent and learning officers. Essentially, they are facing the same organizational challenges as many of our leaders in today’s FORTUNE 500 firm, namely they are: • In constant recruitment mode • Experimenting with being creative about motivating and rewarding top talent • Using the latest collaborative tools so global teams can be constantly connected to each other • Incorporating more personalization into day-to-day interactions with team players So, if we believe these online games are a preview for what leaders will be facing in the next few years, what can we learn about what works? Here are some lessons and observations from Leadership’s Online Labs article: Think first about how to change the game rather than solely focusing on "building individual leadership competencies." Two suggestions: First think about offering immediate individual and non-monetary team rewards. This can range from public ratings and ranking systems recognizing stellar individual contributions (think Amazon ratings here) to devising a game-inspired set of incentives where players have visibility into what their reward will be if their team is successful. As the HBR article states, "the power of online games is that people care very much about the virtual gains and losses, even if the currency that records them can’t be exchanged for dollars." So the processes we set up for documenting individual contributions and allowing these to be rated, commented on and ranked is a very powerful incentive. Create more detailed views into the profiles of team members as I discussed last week in my article, "Performance Learning 2.0". The static employee profile used for decades by human resource officers is slowly being replaced by a "personal employee tag cloud" where you can view a snapshot of an employee’s personal and professional life—courses taken, language fluency, projects worked on and work/life goals for next few years. But a note of caution here, employees will ask how this data will be used and companies will need to develop a set of guidelines and policies if they go down this road. Some questions for you and your teams as you leverage the lessons of online games: What is your Facebook Strategy? This has come to mean do you have a strategy for embedding social media into your learning/talent development offerings? This does not have to also mean losing control or taking risks regarding security. Rather, it implies that your organization is making a commitment to experiment with using social media as a way to become relevant to the Millennial Generation. How much of your Learning & Talent Management staff is from the Millennial Generation? Are you tapping into this mindset as you partner with your customers to design and develop new programs? Are you taking the lead to "educate" your organization’s IT department on how game-inspired processes and incentives may need to be created to attract, develop and retain Millennial Generation. For example, have you created a presentation on social media for learning and shared this with your IT department? Remember IT departments need to be brought along early rather than having Human Resources "come up with a solution and then try selling it to IT." One way companies are doing this is appointing a Chief Technology Officer for their learning department. Please share your thoughts with our growing community and me. Technorati Tags: Online games, talent management, Harvard Business Review, Leadership Development, Facebook Email This | Save to del.icio.us | Digg This | Post to Facebook

Unlocking the knowledge of your "stars" for the purpose of building collective intelligence seems to be the goal of a growing number of learning and talent management professionals. Here’s one direct question from the head of learning of a FORTUNE 500 firm: "How do I identify the stars within the enterprise, motivate them to share their knowledge and then empower them with a toolkit that is seamless?" Do you recognize yourself in this quote? In fact, AMR Research estimates that in 2007 the total amount spent on knowledge management was $73 billion and this is expected to grow by 16% in 2008. Why? I believe that increasingly companies are going to great lengths to capture and utilize the vast amounts of unstructured information that is flowing through, and around them. KM (Knowledge Management) is a vast, catch-all phrase that encompasses all kinds of software from portals to search engines to content management systems. Now the decisions around how to unlock this knowledge becomes more complex because more and more questions get raised: Does this synch with your company’s Social Media strategy? Do you want your application to be "searchable?" Can users create content that is both public and private? Finally, what polices and guidelines need to change as you attempt to "unlock" this knowledge for the benefit of all? According to Forrester Research, 50% of the Global 2000 are planning to adopt some type of enterprise 2.0 solutions by 2013. This equates to a $4.6 billion market. The chart below shows how companies of various sizes are looking to adopt Web 2.0 in their respective organizations. So, if you work at a Global 2000 company (defined as having 20,000 employees) your organization is either in a buying mode or considering buying enterprise 2.0 software. Here are a few questions for you: Is your Human Resources and/or Learning department involved in this decision? Have you made a presentation to your department and to your IT department about the issues you need solved in order to unlock this knowledge? Have you created relationships with key "influencers" in the organization so your point of view is understood and heard. Let me know where you are in this process. What’s clear is that with a market the size of $4.6 billion there will be a number of alternatives to consider in building the best solution to tapping into your organization’s collective wisdom. Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Forrester, Groundswell, AMR Research Email this | Save to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share on Facebook

We held our first meeting of the Learning Innovation Network at Sun Microsystems this week. The focus of the dialogue and discussion was around the range of innovations we are experimenting with in corporate learning. This includes an enterprise web 2.0 toolkit of blogs, wikis and online communities as well as metaphorical learning experiences, focused on designing learning with impact while meeting key business outcomes. We had a wide ranging discussion of how learning will change and evolve from a traditional function to one that is more integrated into the fabric of every employee’s life. Key themes that emerged include: The team from Sun Microsystems kicked off the event with a major theme we discussed for the rest of our day and half. The trend, dubbed, "Learning 2.0″ is moving corporate learning from structured programs to collaborative learning experiences. This means top-down push learning is being replaced by self service "pull" learning with an overall goal of taking our General Motors production model for designing and delivering learning and shifting this to a Google-like search model. Sun is determined to push its LMS system (currently the heart of its learning system) to the periphery of a new, strategic (and open source) tool that will allow flexible, web-enabled learning from anywhere, including mobile devices, and will encourage employees to contribute to course content creation. Learning is becoming more social, informal, continuous and embedded in our daily activities. While the term "social learning" has gained a cult status, the ability to collectively create and collectively understand is becoming a mandatory skill for employees at all levels. In fact, credit Suisse shared their online virtual communities of practice model which connects employees to others in the organization based on their skills and knowledge sets. It makes it easy to find expertise, to "know what Credit Suisse knows." Learning is becoming more mobile. Millennials view the Internet as something that comes to them not something they go to. With over 2 billion mobile devices in use, mobiles have now eclipsed PC’s in the marketplace. We should remember that as we consider delivery options for current and new programs. At Sun Microsystems, technical training is being delivered globally to field engineers on their iPhones, seems like this model will continue to gain traction in the coming months. Finally, after many demo’s of new tools, programs, games for learning and metaphorical learning experiences, we closed with the need for learning professionals to: Focus less on how technology is changing learning and more on how the learners, especially the 80 million Millennials, are bringing new expectations and demands to the workforce. These include being able to use the same applications they have grown up with, such as Instant Messaging, Mobile web conferencing, BlackBerries and video-sharing on-the-job. Be open to new needs and expectations of four generations in the workforce. Understand and share how to make change happen in an organization. It’s not easy but there are lessons in how to improve your odds of success with implementing innovations in corporate learning. if you are interested in learning more about the Learning Innovation Network, send me an email at jeanne@newlearningplaybook.com We are looking for more learning departments operating "on the edge." Technorati Tags: Millennials, Sun Microsystems, Google, BlackBerry, Web 2.0, Learning Innovation Network