In its largest purchase to date, LinkedIn announced it will acquire e-learning giant lynda.com for $1.5 billion. This is huge, not only for the two companies involved in the deal but also for the wider learning and development industry, and, indeed, the working population as a whole.
On the surface, the reason for the merger seems clear: Two people with a common, and vocal, passion for learning are joining forces, and companies, for the greater good, i.e., using learning to close the gap between the job market and the skills that job market needs. In his blog post titled ‘Always Be Learning,’ LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner went as far as to say that an “interest in helping to reform the education system” was one of the reasons he got into business in the first place, so learning is clearly something close to his heart. He says he believes we need to transition from “a 20th century approach heavily reliant on rote learning to a 21st century curriculum focused on collaboration, critical reasoning, and creative problem solving,” with greater opportunities for experiential learning.
On the business side of things, the move gives LinkedIn an open door into the L&D market, while giving lynda.com unprecedented access to 350 million active LinkedIn users, all of whom, by definition, are likely to be at least somewhat interested in professional development. So both parties are likely to draw significant economic benefit from the deal. LinkedIn’s share price, in fact, rose more than 1.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange after news of the acquisition was released.
The “Economic Graph”
But Weiner doesn’t mention the impact on the bottom line in his blog post, and he certainly doesn’t talk about share prices. What he does allude to is how the two companies—which are, it has to be said, aligned in terms of values and aspirations—can benefit not just each other but individual employees all over the world.
“LinkedIn has the members, the jobs, a unique understanding of the skills required to do those jobs,” he says. “lynda.com’s service has the premium library of skills-based courses. Together, we can bring opportunities and access to knowledge that everyone deserves. And together, we can more easily build the Economic Graph by mapping together the people, jobs, skills, and knowledge that are core components of it.”
If you are not familiar with the “Economic Graph” Weiner is referring to, it’s all part of LinkedIn’s ambitious plan to produce a digital map of the global workforce, creating profiles for every worker and every company in the world, with a digital representation of every job and the skills required to obtain those jobs.
Creating Meaning and Relevance
This is where things get interesting from a professional development perspective. While LinkedIn long has served the function of connecting people with employers, and massive online open courses, or MOOCs, are certainly nothing new (lynda.com itself has been around for 20 years), the coming together of the two in this way is something fresh.
In an interview in the latest issue of Enhance magazine, futurist Gerd Leonhard talked about finding the value of information beyond availability or accessibility.
“We should not be under the illusion that [having lots of information freely available] is a big deal in itself,” he said. “Just because there are 60 million songs on Spotify, does that mean all music is suddenly extremely valuable to everyone? The value is in translating what it means and the relevance to an individual.”
Achieving that relevance and meaning could be one of the key achievements of this merger. LinkedIn members all over the world now will be able to not only see what employment opportunities are available to them, but also see which online courses would help them become more employable in those specific roles and then book themselves onto those courses. Their attendance in a particular course then could form part of their LinkedIn profile, making them more attractive to LinkedIn recruiters and giving the recruiters a deeper insight into the skills of potential candidates. So not only will learning be more widely available and easily accessible, it also will be relevant and meaningful to employees and employers alike.
Closing the Skills Gap?
So far the move points toward a drive to make LinkedIn more of a “well-rounded” recruitment tool and to encourage its community to engage with the site in a more meaningful way. But on a wider level, both Weiner and Weinman hope it will go some way to closing the ever-growing skills gap that business leaders across the world are rightly concerned about.
This is a promising prospect, but it does seem to be based on the assumption that online learning is a complete professional development solution in itself, which is simply not the case. Digital forms of learning can be extremely effective, and the combination of lynda.com’s vast library and LinkedIn’s ability to make learning accessible and relevant undoubtedly is going to benefit employees. But ultimately it is just an efficient and streamlined way to deliver knowledge to people, and that knowledge will never be enough in itself without the support of experience and exposure.
In other words: It is clear that this merger could help close the skills gap by enabling employees to see which skills are in demand and then taking a course that will teach them those skills, but if we really want to stem the shortage, we still need to take the time to help people put those theoretical skills into practice, and this is achieved through tangible experience. Similarly, the shortage of “soft skills” such as confidence, leadership, or communication is only ever going to be tackled if human interaction is part of the development process.
As Gerd Leonhard put it: “You can’t take learning out of context and say, for example, that the information about how to be a nurse can be conveyed through text or videos or games online in the same way as hanging out with other student nurses. One is not a substitute for the other. Institutions need to be able to serve learning in multiple different formats, but in the end, the experience economy will prevail.”
A Shift in Focus
There is an opportunity here, when it comes to the professional development of employees: to create a solid link between the easily accessible information that the LinkedIn/lynda.com merger will provide, and the experiential and human elements that only face-to-face learning can offer. Companies now can better focus their efforts on human-centric learning activities such as coaching, collaboration, or experiential learning. These are the things you can only learn with the help of other people.
This isn’t a competition between digital and traditional learning. It is just to say that now, more than ever, learning providers need to refocus their efforts and understand that simply imparting knowledge is no longer the job of a person standing at the front of a classroom. If people want knowledge, they can reach into their pocket and grab their phone, any time, any place. If they want that knowledge to be more engaging, focused, and relevant, they can turn to online learning portals such as lynda.com. Now, with the help of this merger, this latter point is truer than ever.
Shining a Light on the Value of Learning
So, in answer to this article’s headline question: Yes, this merger certainly will affect the learning and development landscape, but, no, I don’t think I’d go as far as to call it an earthquake. The way we develop employees is changing constantly, and this is just another reason to revaluate the way we do things. It’s another opportunity to harness the power of technology and create the best learning experience possible for our employees.
What I do think this merger does, however, is shine a bright light on the importance of learning and development. We constantly talk about how crucial professional development is in terms of helping organizations perform better, and those words sometimes can fall on deaf ears when budgets are getting tight, so it is heartening to see a company as globally influential as LinkedIn put such a high value on learning.
$1.5 billion, in this case.
Rachel Kay is the managing director of Thales Learning & Development. She is responsible for developing Thales Learning & Development into a leading-edge L&D solutions provider. Kay is a regular contributor to Enhance – The Magazine for Learning and Development.
