Sharing Training Materials: A Good Idea, But Will Companies Participate?

By Jim Jubelirer, an independent management consultant working with EDF to help speed the transition to a sustainable economy.

Can we accelerate the adoption of sustainable behaviors and products in business by sharing training materials?  That is the question we asked a group of subject-matter experts at a meeting in EDF’s DC office on July 20, 2010.

As described in my earlier post, the idea is that companies benefit from each others’ investment in training materials via sharing the materials in an “open source” mode – ideally, materials would be licensed for shared use by their creator, used and improved by others, and re-contributed to a public archive. The Hewlett Foundation, in particular, has promoted this approach in academia, calling it "open education resources" or OER.

Potential contributors would be:

• Fortune 1000 companies that already have sustainability initiatives under