(“Lean Learning Provision System”, R.Crepon, EADTU 25th anniversary conference, Pafos / Cyprus, 09/27/2012 )
Full Text: 
It is well accepted that cross-organizational and cross-sectorial collaboration leads to innovative ecosystems that create economic growth. For instance, in the field of Education & Training (E&T), creative partnerships can be built between Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and companies. But it is also a very challenging task since all the four hurdles to change, namely political, resources related, cognitive and motivational concerns, prevent this to happen.
For my research work, I developed a high interest in the study of the main factors that contribute to put in place collaborative frameworks between HEI and Corporations for E&T provision. Hereafter is a quick summary of what has been presented at the EADTU’s conference hold in Cyprus, in September 2012.
In order to optimize their investment in learning resources, HEI and firms can devise new approaches for what we can call a “lean learning provision system”. We propose three distinct models where HEI and the private sector collaborate for the development of e-learning, where HEI sell some learning contents to corporations or simply exchange them against corporate learning contents. From the analysis we can conclude that each business model best fits to some organizational contexts depending on the set of objectives, on the nature of the expert knowledge involved, and on both the positioning and capabilities of the institutions. In any case, academic / corporate partnerships “assure public and private funding and stakeholders’ involvement, ensure bridges and flow of information between ICT for learning providers and institutions able to anticipate skills shortages” (Learnovation, 2008).
We hope the present publication will contribute to develop the “capacity to drive ICT exploitation in education” (Learnovation, 2008) for the benefit of the organizations and their employees, might they belong to the public or to the private sector.