Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2019 - 60

CLOSING
D E A L S
COURSERA REACHES UNICORN STATUS AND
ACCELERATES ENTERPRISE PRODUCT INNOVATION
BY TARYN OESCH

Online learning libraries are increasingly
expanding their consumer products
to include enterprise offerings -
packaging online courses for entire teams,
customizing courseware and offering
data and analytics functions for training
managers. Coursera is becoming a giant in
this space, with 40 million users and more
than 1,800 enterprise customers. In fact, its
$103 million Series E equity round in April
made it a "unicorn" (valued at over $1
billion) - a rarity in the training industry.
According to Leah Belsky, vice president of
enterprise,"Coursera will use the funding to
accelerate product innovations, especially
for the enterprise business, and to expand
our partnerships with companies and
governments globally." Last year, Coursera
launched an artificial intelligence (AI)powered skills benchmarking tool, and
Belsky says Coursera will be building on
that tool to create industry-based skills
maps and "content collections mapped to
specific roles, skills and industries."
"The future of learning and the future of
work are converging," Belsky adds. "At a
time when globalization and technology
advancement is reshaping our lives, it
is also causing a rate of change that
is outpacing human adaptability. AI,
automation, shifting demographics and
the changing economic landscape are all
disrupting businesses, jobs and the skills
they require." Coursera's goal is to help
individuals and companies navigate these
changes using a "scalable, stackable, ondemand and curated learning model."
THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF DATA
"The quality of our learning catalog is our
strongest differentiator," says Belsky, "but
increasingly, customers are approaching

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us to learn from our platform data and
skills insights to inform their talent
transformation strategy."
Different organizations have different
required skills and learning needs. They
need individualized data to understand
those needs and determine what training
to provide their employees. Online
learning libraries can often provide an
advantage in this area, because they have
a great deal of data from learners already
in their platform. By leveraging this data
and offering it to enterprise customers,
Coursera can enable more targeted
upskilling initiatives.

THE FUTURE OF
LEARNING AND THE
FUTURE OF WORK
ARE CONVERGING.
Belsky sees this trend growing in the near
future. "Traditionally, L&D initiatives have
been positioned more as an employee
benefit, with the aim of improving
employee retention through more broadstrokes learning opportunities," she says.
"As we see technology advancement
outpace human adaptability, building
training programs that resolve actual skills
shortages within the organization will be a
priority for L&D."
She believes that, rather than training
being solely a top-down directive from
the training team, it will become a
collaborative initiative in partnership with
team leaders. After all, they are the ones
who know best what skills their teams
need to develop in order to be successful.

Combining the training organization's
data and learning expertise with team
leaders' access to employees and subject
matter knowledge will help organizations
better fill skills gaps and meet business
needs. And Coursera wants to be there
to assist.
HOW EDUCATION ATTRACTS FUNDERS
SEEK, which led Coursera's Series E funding
round, is dedicated to employment
and education. Its portfolio consists
of companies in 18 countries aimed at
"help[ing] people live more fulfilling and
productive working lives and help[ing]
organizations succeed," according to its
website. SEEK was founded as an online
jobs site, but its investment in Coursera,
along with its recent acquisition of
50% of the business of Futurelearn,
demonstrates the growing reality that
you cannot separate talent acquisition
from talent development. Matching
people to jobs is useless if those people
can't succeed in them.
"This investment reflects our commitment
to online education, which is enabling
the up-skilling and re-skilling of people
and is aligned to our purpose of helping
people live fulfilling working lives," said
SEEK co-founder and CEO Andrew Bassat
in the press release announcing the
Coursera investment.
As other funders continue to understand
the importance of education at work, and
the return they see on their investment
in the companies that help provide that
education, will we see more unicorns in
the training marketplace?
Taryn Oesch is the managing editor of digital
content at Training Industry, Inc. Email Taryn.

https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/e-learning/online-learning-libraries-expand-lifelong-learning-to-corporate-customers/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/e-learning/online-learning-libraries-expand-lifelong-learning-to-corporate-customers/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/measurement-and-analytics/how-technology-enables-data-driven-talent-decisions/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/articles/measurement-and-analytics/how-technology-enables-data-driven-talent-decisions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/04/25/online-education-provider-coursera-is-now-worth-more-than-1-billion/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/measurement-and-analytics/coursera-expands-coursera-for-business-features-launches-ai-powered-skills-benchmarking-tool/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/measurement-and-analytics/coursera-expands-coursera-for-business-features-launches-ai-powered-skills-benchmarking-tool/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/e-learning/coursera-secures-103m-in-series-e-from-new-and-existing-investors/ https://www.trainingindustry.com/press-release/e-learning/coursera-secures-103m-in-series-e-from-new-and-existing-investors/

Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - July/August 2019