Corporate learning in a disruptive digital era: a new global organizational paradigma (A case-study of IBM’s Your Learning Platform)

In a digital world when the technologies as well as the market places are evolving at an alarming pace, facilitating the employees to acquire newer knowledge and helping them advance their learning is most challenging than ever before. Staying agile and to become and remain ahead of competition in this swiftly changing business landscape is a daunting task indeed for companies. Corporate universities and Classrooms in B-schools have totally been overshadowed and got undermined by newer versions of learning and we are witnessing that the buffet of teaching employees is expanding and changing more than ever before. In addition to tracking down a plethora of in-person opportunities in the form of mentorships and training, employees are able to use their computers and smart phones to sift through facilely rich content online at any time and place. It may be in the form of online social media networks, published papers, as well as videos and courses. Nowadays, mobile and cloud technologies, and social networks are taken for granted by the tech-savvy modern employees. And not surprisingly, the millennials believe that technology makes them more effective and productive and hence always prefer to communicate through the electronic mode at workplace than face to face or for that matter even the telephone. They are found to be using technology only routinely. This Paper addresses the important challenge of shifting learning to the 21st Century platform economy faced by corporates and discusses how IBM has successfully tackled the same through its Your Learning Platform.