A Corporate Training Paradigm: The Innovators

Job training for new physicians is among the most rigorous of any profession.

Medical students follow a prescriptive path -- a set of carefully sequenced learning activities (e.g., readings, classes, structured experiences) with frequent assessments. Students can't become physicians by simply knowing the subject matter and passing a test.

They have to prove to expert observers that they are able to perform specified procedures, within a time frame with specific results. It is not enough to know and understand, doctors must be able to deliver results. Why isn't the same true in business? Why don't we teach business critical jobs such as production, sales, customer service and leadership using the medical school model?

Corporate training embraces a very different model. Many corporations today have created a corporate university to create standard programs and leverage scale to lower costs. Today's corporate universities typically operate as cost-centers; the university must pay for itself by charging user fees.

On the surface it seems to make good business sense, but the model has a fundamental flaw. Unlike medical schools, the objective of corporate universities is not to produce capable professionals but to recover costs. How does one do that? Like any other business -- offer whatever customers want.

An example of this model is AT&T(T) University in 1998. In the late 1990's the telecom industry was going through a seismic change from circuit-switched voice technology to Internet-based data technology. The change was similar to the change Eastman Kodak(EK) and Fuji when through when photography technologies changed from film to digital.