“Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant—perhaps only—source of competitive advantage.”

Peter Drucker

Meeting Announcement

August Meeting: Emerging Business Issues and Learning Trends--Perspectives from Three Industries

Top learning executives will discuss the key business issues that are driving significant changes in their learning strategies. It is at this intersection of business and learning that corporate learning plays a key role in supporting the realization of business goals and the resolution of critical business problems. This session will explore the creative learning solutions that leading companies are developing to cope with their dynamic business environments.

Meeting format:

The speakers will give a brief presentation about a major business issue facing their industries and companies and the learning solutions they are developing in response. An interactive panel discussion, with audience participation, will then follow. The meeting will end with a summary of the key issues and ideas for members to take away and reflect on for their organizations.

Speakers/Panelists

  • Network Appliance: Tom Kelly, V.P. NetApp University (and formerly VP, Internet Learning Solutions Group, Cisco)
  • Kaiser Permanente: Rob Harris, Senior Consultant, Enterprise eLearning
  • Genentech: Tom Hill, Director of Learning and Knowledge Management

Network Appliance

Business Challenge
The primary business challenge that Tom will address is effective on-boarding: reducing time to competency for new hires during a steep hiring ramp.  This is particularly a challenge for many companies in Silicon valley that are now in a rapid growth phase after having spent the last several years focused on cost cutting, downsizing, and outsourcing.  And the current growth phase must be accomplished efficiently, unlike the growth furing the bubble, where on-boarding inefficiencies were overcome by throwing money at the problem. 

Learning Solution
Tom and his team are implementing a strategy for enlisting a cadre of SMEs to document their critical knowledge so that it can be used as the source material for new hire training, performance support, and reference.

Tom Kelly, Vice President, NetApp University
Tom Kelly is vice president of NetApp University. Kelly is responsible for ensuring that employees, reseller partners, industry partners, and customers are professionally educated and trained on NetApp enterprise solutions with hands-on training and professional certification programs. Prior to joining NetApp, Kelly was vice president of the Internet Learning Solutions Group at Cisco Systems. During his tenure, Kelly launched the Cisco Career Certification Program and established the Field E-Learning Connection, Partner E-Learning Connection, and Customer E-Learning Connection, e-learning portals with a cumulative audience of more than 200,000 employees, partners, and customers. Kelly has more than 20 years of experience in the education and training industry and has held positions at Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, NeXT Corporation, and Control Data Corporation. Kelly is an active member of both the Computer Education Managers Association (CEdMA) and the Chief Learning Officer Xchange (CLO Xchange). He is co-author of The Business Case for E-Learning.  Kelly holds both a bachelor of science degree and a master of business administration degree from Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.

Kaiser Permanente

Business Challenges

  • Offering products that enlarge the pool of potential enrollees and offer wider access to Permanente medicine
  • Providing a broad suite of products to companies that want to consolidate carriers/plans
  • Leverage new technologies to streamline processes and put a cap on administrative costs
  • Build on its technology to enhance Kaiser’s quality care and service delivery

Learning-Related Solutions

  • HealthConnect (automated medical records)
  • HR-SSO and HRIS (establishment of an HR Shared-Service)
  • Organization and implementation of PeopleSoft 8.8
  • Next Generation products for members and institutions

Rob Harris,  Senior Consultant, Enterprise eLearning
Rob is focused on implementation of learning governance and learning management for Kaiser Permanente (140K+ employees), and integration of training and performance support for the HR Shared-Service and HRIS (Peoplesoft) implementation. Rob's fingerprints can be found on five of the major eLearning and corporate university projects of our era. He founded and directed Loudcloud University, including content management, webinar development, staffing, and management. Previously, he assembled and managed the team of product managers, interaction designers, and editors that put together a cutting-edge eLearning environment for Headlight.com. Earlier, Rob had produced Virtual Campus, Oracle's first single-storefront for learning and its successor, an e-commerce-like Enterprise Learning Management System for 42,000 worldwide employees. At Charles Schwab, he implemented the firm's first enterprise educational multimedia program and its first distance-learning program. He also provided return-on-investment rationale to demonstrate the value of increased human capital. As manager of learning technology for Sun University, Rob designed and built a learning technology R&D lab and a distance learning studio to roll out live video-to-desk applications.

Genentech

Business Challenges

  • Very rapid growth: Genentech is the fastest growing company on the  NYSE, from 40-50% revenue growth year to year.
  • On-boarding: how to reduce the 'time to productivity' rate of new hires during a steep hiring ramp
  • Earnings Growth: while supporting growing the business, management set a target to  tripe earnings in 5 years

Learning Solutions

Genentech’s Learning and Knowledge Management group has developed a set of dynamic learning and knowledge management services to meet these needs, along a continuum of learning value from the perspective of the end user. Tom and his colleagues are embracing a strategy to move from an event-focused learning and knowledge management services group toward an empowering, scalable and proactive process-based organization with a portfolio of services.

Tom Hill, Director of Learning and Knowledge Management

Tom leads of team of 45 professionals in enterprise learning services, knowledge engineering, and digital video and graphics services.  Today, Genentech is growing at 40 - 50 % per year offering a unique challenge and opportunity to innovate in the development of state-of-the-art learning services and dynamic object repositories. In addition, he leads the Learning Economics Group (LEG) a non profit professional association focused on conducting original research on the strategic value of learning to an organization and its economic impact. LEG  and the Marriott School of Management, at Brigham Young University recently announced the founding of the Learning Economic Research Program, supporting a research database, continuous research literature searches and publishing, and a website for professional support.  Previous, to joining Genentech, Tom led the Advanced Learning and Technology program at the Nonstop Enterprise Division, of Hewlett-Packard. He has published several research papers, on the future of learning and technology,  most recently in the ISPI Journal, Feb. 2004, "Characteristics of an Online University for Personal Development." Tom holds a Masters degree in Learning and Technology from Stanford University.

Who should attend:

Learning executives, managers, practitioners who want to learn from and share with colleagues who face similar business and learning issues.

  • Business managers who are interested in the intersection of business and learning.
  • Learning program managers who influence development decisions
  • Solutions providers interested in business drivers for decisions on learning technology and solutions.

When:

August 25, 2005,  4:30PM - 7:00PM

Where:

SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA
(SRI is on Ravenswood drive between Middlefield and El Camino Real)

Cost:

$20 at the door

Note:

Please use the parking lot at the corner of Ravenswood and Middlefield (next to the church) and walk the half block to the meeting. SRI has very limited parking in front of Building A; those spaces are reserved for SRI's use.

 

 



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