Recently, I attended an enterprise learning leadership conference. Headlining the event was best selling author David Price and his colleagues Larry Rosenstock, High Tech Hich School and Garry Ridge, CEO, WD-40; all whom of which have successfully implemented David Price’s Open concept.  The discussion between the three dove into deep culture topics of informal learning, creating innovative non-traditional workplaces and classrooms.  These three wise-men of “Open” provoked the audience to think outside of the current classroom and learning models. The same models that have been used since the early 1900’s.

One question David Price left me with was, “Why is our current culture so terrified of informal learning?”  

As this question rang through my mind, I of course decided to purchase his book. In reading the first few chapters, the question rang over, over and over. The answer is simple these informal open learning forums, centers, portals etc… are flipping the current economic paradigm of the entire global knowledge workforce.  When arriving to this point I began thinking how the entire informal knowledge structure and advertising, if transferred to a graph, are perpendicular to each other.  They have a very intimate cross-point that if utilized strategically would result in marketing success.  The kind of success I’m describing parallels that of advertising agencies who spend millions of dollars on psychological demo insight, but on a much grander scale.

In a digital universe where content is king, it begs the answer of the “Open” learning model to embrace the future of learning and harness the cross-point between marketing and learning.

If you’re wondering what that cross-point is, I’ve given you a small hint in the last paragraph.