Convergence or Divergence?
John Hagel,
Edge Perspectives,
Oct 01, 2007
You should probably have a look at this post if you're interested in the business or commercial aspects of online learning. Essentially, the suggestion is that enterprises we had always thought of as conjoined - product development, say, and customer service - are actually very different enterprises. Fair enough, and I think that some of the functions in online learning (teaching and testing, say) could also be diverged. I talked about that in 1998. But I think readers of this post should also be cautious. There's some good thinking here, but it is buried in a sea of bafflegab (because what Hagel really wants you to do is buy his report). There's no need for this. Hagel is describing commerce which is both convergent (it brings things from multiple sources together) and divergent (innovation, production, transportation, marketing and sales are handled by different entities). Some of this makes sense, while some of it (like, say, the IP pure-play) is nonsense.
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