"Outside-In" and e-learning

The "Outside-In" Enterprise by Irving Wladawsky-Berger describes a significant change in enterprise since and about the last 10 years.

[I]n an outside-in approach, businesses, governments and other institutions embraced these same standards internally, and built what we called "intranets," as well as reaching out to connect to their supply chains with "extranets."

This is a major change to the competition and differentiation factors of enterprises. Before that, businesses used products based on proprietary and incompatible standards to create differences. Businesses tried to "lock-in" the customers based on the cost of change. Today, businesses compete by delivering different value-propositions, increasing the need of continuous training to the employees.

Luckily, this "outside-in" process also helps to reduce the cost of providing training. Basically there are two types of training, general skill training and businesss-specific process training. As the internal-process increases the adoption of standardised practices, such training can be brought in off the shelf, reducing the need of development of training material.

The focus of training development can be focussed on those aspects of the business which deliver differentiating values - the key competitive differentiators.

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