If it is true that storytelling is one of the most compelling ways for us to learn, then YouTube, web video, podcasts and so on will revolutionize not just our personal learning, but also the way that we do business. Never before has it been so easy to produce content – and share it.

But sometimes it takes a great storyteller to tell a great story. And often the most compelling storyteller is the person who speaks from experience, who is able to recount their successes and their failures with the authority that only comes from “being there".

From today, Learning on Demand by SAP provides access to a premium collection of stories from some of the world’s most respected business leaders – including JW Marriott Jr (Marriott International), Dame Anita Roddick (The Body Shop), Peter Ellwood (ICI) and Dina Dublon (Microsoft). In fact, there are over 60 business focused videos contained in the 12 month subscription (with more to be added during the year).

Produced by 50Lessons, the world’s leading digital video business library, each video presentation is bite-sized, meaning that you can easily watch it on the way to work, at lunch or in-between meetings. With over six hours of useful, practical instruction, this new subscription will be a great way to extend your business skills and sharpen other aspects of your personal learning program. And at only $129 for 12 months access, it represents great value.

Here is a short example of the approach and style of the learning content from 50 Lessons.

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.

They say that 70% of the world’s transactions touch an SAP system. But how does that translate to people? Sure, those of us who work with or for SAP understand just how this figure can be calculated …. but what about people beyond the SAP Ecosystem?

Using “Six Degrees of Separation”, I thought it would be interesting to see how we are “SAParated” on Facebook.

The Six Degrees theory suggests that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. If this is the case, then not only are we all connected, we may have an SAP "experience" that we can talk about.

To take part all you have to do is:

1. Join this Facebook group
2. Click on "Invite People to Join" from the menu on the right
3. Select the friends who you THINK would have come in contact with SAP up to a maximum of 70% of your friends
4. Add two more random friends
5. Click on "Send invitation"

It’s that simple!

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.