footnote_informalroi


ROI of Informal Learning

in response to a blog post by Tony Karrer on April 25, 2007

 

Tony, I have plowed this ground for a long time and have concluded that it's more productive to talk about business results than to quibble about whether ROI is the appropriate means to measure them.

 

 

I have just posted a scan of Chapter 3 of Informal Learning that does precisely that. It's at http://tinyurl.com/34cczx

 

 

The ongoing blather about whether informal learning is 80% or 60% or 40% is not a big deal to me. Obviously, the ratio depends on the context. The fact is that informal learning is a lot more important than we've thought, and learning professionals that overlook it do their employers a disservice.

 

 

One cadre of nitpickers is trying to throw out the baby with the bath water, quoting me as saying I made up the cost allocation figures. I would describe it as informed judgment rather than make-believe, but again the point is not 3-place accuracy, it's that most organizations spend precious little budget or mind-share on informal learning compared to formal, to the detriment of the bottom line.

 

 

I don't have much patience for the people who say they haven't read my book but they know it's wrong. Geez!

 

As for the argument that some guy I never heard of made up the 80/20 proportion out of whole cloth and therefore it's wrong..., the critic should get a life. I'll post some sources at informl.com in a few days.

 

 

There's work to be done in measuring the impact of informal learning, but this semantic claptrap and faux-statistics get in the way of carrying it out.

 

How much should we invest in informal learning? Where? I'd like to be able to say more than "more." It's currently tough to take it much further than that.