I was re-reading an old post from the Christensen Institute the other day. Reflecting on how innovation was trapped in an echo chamber, I started wondering if the same could be said of workplace learning in today.

Back in 2019, siloed information in US schools highlighted three major challenges for workplace learning innovation. I reckon these are still relevant in 2025:

Promising under-the-radar models get ignored
I get this. I see it all the time since we’re model-heavy in workplace learning. I can rattle off the familiar ones and have been known to craft my own to help me make sense of the world. There is a model fatigue in L&D and I do wonder if the recoil and withdrawal from ‘modern practices’ and the return to traditional approaches is simply re-engagement with the familiar.

Entire regions get overlooked
As a London-based L&D professional I’m incredibly lucky since many events and exposure tend to centre on London and other major cities, e.g. Manchester, Brighton, etc. Organisations outside these locational hot points are rarely asked to contribute to reports, panels or advisory boards. Consequently, if you were to design an “innovation map” of UK L&D , I think it would be incomplete and geographically narrow.

Broader trends get lost
I’ve read dozens of papers which talk about what we could/should/must/need/might do to move L&D on. What they all have in common is predictions based on larger corporate and enterprise models and organisations. But they’re not the real world; the broad trends are what the users who are just about managing are using to deal with compliance requests, new and improved onboarding and leadership programmes.

We need to build MUCH better collective knowledge. Not so much on the future, but what’s happening now.

Innovation happens on the edges and we need to know what the limits of people’s capacity is now before we launch yet another new initiative.