When Clay Shirky wrote Here Comes Everybody, he suggested that group action – community based and technology driven efforts – is changing, or even revolutionising, our society. Wikipedia is the much-touted model – but there are many others – where individuals devote their time, intellect and creative efforts to collaborate on a social innovation of some kind. But how does this play out in the Enterprise space? What happens when we try to bring these tools and open, collaborative approaches into our place of work? And how do companies deal with it?

Jakob Nielsen has just released a new report on Social Networking on Intranets. He suggests that, ready or not, Enterprise 2.0 is on its way – and could well be happening right under your nose:

Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It’s affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with. And companies can’t just draw a line in the sand and say it’s okay for employees to use Web 2.0 to communicate with customers, but it’s not okay to use it when communicating with each other.

The key findings, while not earth shattering to those involved in online communities, reinforce much of what is known and is already in practice:

• Underground efforts yield big results: it’s easier (and more cost-effective) to allow small, hidden projects to build momentum and then endorse them once they have proven their worth.
• Frontline workers are driving the vision: younger workers are already using these tools at home. You don’t need to teach them how to use these tools.
• Communities are self-policing: peer-to-peer moderation is very powerful and effective
• Business need is the big driver: these web-based tools are changing the way that we collaborate and communicate – but the tools are incidental. The real value lies with business transformation
• Organizations must cede power: in the same way that social media has changed the way that organisations “control the message”, Enterprise 2.0 tools challenge the entrenched approaches to corporate communications

You can read the summary report in detail here – but one of the key takeaways for me is “It’s about what the tools let users do and the business problems the tools address”. After all, no matter whether your efforts are for collaboration and communication, customer relationships or learning (my professional interest), if you aren’t solving someone’s problems or driving towards outcomes that win for the individual participants as well as the organization, then you are just wasting time – a lot of it.

Learning on Demand by SAP was created with flexibility in mind.

We wanted to make sure that independent consultants, who traditionally have little contact with SAP Education, are able to easily access and consume our quality SAP eLearning content in a way that best suited the demands of their busy schedules. We put in place a content delivery network to make sure that the course materials are speedily delivered (at least from server to server – clearly, we cannot provide high speed access if you are using a low bandwidth connection), and our Learning Management Solution ensures that you can start, stop and recommence the course as it suits you. This means, that no matter whether you have 20 minutes or two hours to spare, you can conveniently jump-in and jump-out of your enrolled courses without missing a beat.

And now that we have a convenient (and cost-effective) subscription offer in place, I thought it might be useful to share with you some of the background information about our plans. This can be useful if you are putting together a case for your personal skills development – and need to convince your boss (or consulting partner). It may even help you begin to think about the role of quality SAP training in the context of your own long-term career.

Take a look at:

• Our Learning on Demand by SAP brochure – Learning at Your Fingertips
• The Slideshare presentation on the Future of Learning
• The Learning on Demand by SAP demonstration

And if you need something a little flashier – try our animated presentation or YouTube introduction.

And, of course, if you just want to ask a question – you can find us on Twitter or on Facebook.

Learning on Demand by SAP has now been live for almost a month. In this time we have received feedback from a wide variety of sources – from Twitter, on blogs and on forums – and one of the most consistent questions has been around the availability of subscriptions.

We have now made it possible for community members to purchase an annual subscription to the entire catalog of SAP eLearning courseware. For one low price of US$1799 (plus 10.3% tax), you have access to over 350 existing courses. This price also includes access to additional SAP eLearning courses as they become available.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to speak with Joe Westhuizen about Learning on Demand by SAP and the new annual subscription. In this podcast he explains, in more detail, some of the plans for the immediate future.

Traditionally SAP Education is known for its classroom based, instructor led courses. But increasingly, learners and businesses are demanding more flexible, time-sensitive alternatives. In this podcast, COO of SAP Education, Eric MacDonald speaks a little about what he calls “the year of education” – a time for focusing on the skills and capabilities of the people who power our customer’s businesses.

By way of explanation, Eric introduces the core objectives of Learning on Demand by SAP:

1. Cost-effective, flexible enablement
2. Enhanced learner experience
3. Strengthen and extend SAP Education’s interaction with our customers, partners and learners
4. Extend SAP Education’s reach and ability to enable the SAP Ecosystem

About Learning on Demand by SAP Podcasts

The goal of this series, brought to you by SAP Education, is to bring to you the latest thinking around organizational learning, flexible training and web 2.0 in a corporate learning context.

As a child I thought that the Year 2000 would bring a radically different world. I expected robots, flying cars, moving walkways. I hoped for space travel. It seemed like a future full of certainty – but it also felt like “the future” was a long way away.

During my working life, however, the pace of change seems to have accelerated; and wave upon wave of change in the workplace, in the economy and even at home seems to reinforce this fact. But these are not isolated changes – as John Hagel III, John Seely Brown (JSB), and Lang Davison explain in their recent report, The Big Shift. This report looks at the “deeper trends” and seeks to measure these against 25 metrics designed to make “longer-term performance trends more relevant and actionable”.

Hagel, JSB and Davison have identified three waves of deep change:

• Foundation: this involves changes to the fundamentals of our business landscape driven by digital technology infrastructure and economic liberalization
• Flow: this wave focuses on the flows of knowledge, capital and talent resulting from the first wave (as well as the amplifiers of these flows)
• Impact: what are the consequences of the Big Shift – and how are enterprises able to participate in, and harness the knowledge flows to create value and improve business performance.

According to the report, “current metrics indicate that we are still in the first wave of the Big Shift”. However, by understanding these waves, the authors suggest that firms will gain significant insight about the moves required to improve current performance. And it comes as no surprise that knowledge and learning are fundamental to this:

Companies must move beyond their fixation on getting bigger and more cost-effective to make the institutional innovations necessary to accelerate performance improvement as they add participants to their ecosystems, expanding learning and innovation in collaboration curves and creation spaces. Companies must move, in other words, from scalable efficiency to scalable learning and performance. Only then will they make the most of our new era’s fast-moving digital infrastructure.

Increasingly, and for a number of reasons, enterprises are reconsidering their approach to skilling and corporate education. Many of these echo the report’s findings.

As Cory Coley-Christakos mentioned recently, “The bottom line is that organizations now have [learning and development"] options. The ‘one size fits all’ approach is no longer effective, and a more flexible format allows a broader audience to benefit from different learning paths.”

But what does this mean for your SAP skills? How might this play out across your career? And how is SAP Education responding and seeking to support the SAP ecosystem – from independent consultants through to partners and customers? This slidecast by Joe Westhuizen presents some of our most recent thinking and provides a sneak peek at what we are calling “Learning on Demand by SAP”.

Originally posted on the SAP Community Network.