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www.opensesame.com THE 'GRAY ZONE' This table provides some help in deciding whether to buy or build content, but it is only a guide. In particular, there is a 'gray zone' where the needs a type of content may cross over more than one row of the table. For example, suppose a manufacturing company's finance team needed to learn how to apply a new regulation, or the team on the factory floor may need to take account of a new health and safety directive. The automatic reaction of many internal L&D departments at this stage is often to create a course that describes the new regulation and then explains how it should be applied in the business. On the surface, this sounds right: surely the application of the regulation will be unique to this particular organization? On the other hand, the regulation will be in the public domain, and a great deal of its application will be standard across all companies in that sector, possibly across all businesses regardless of sector. Almost certainly someone, somewhere, will have created learning materials relating to this regulation, would it not be possible to use that material in some way? The learning content 'gray zone' consists of these apparent contradictions where it seems a piece of content has to be in one or the other place on this table. In fact, the content can be in both places, the trick is not to see it as one, but as two, pieces of content. In this case, the company's L&D department can buy a standard course around the new regulation, and add a short explainer of how it applies to the business – perhaps as an introductory piece of text, or a video, or a piece of short, interactive learning material. It need not recreate the entirety of what has already been created somewhere else. How can an organization decide whether to adopt this approach or to create a course from scratch? The answer: look at the cost, but not just at the initial cost. As discussed above, the cost of ownership of a piece of learning content includes these components: • The cost of production • Maintenance costs • Opportunity cost Each choice around buying or building content will have to be made using these criteria, and each choice will differ by organization. The good news for companies looking to buy content is that the world-wide web makes it possible to find almost any sort of content, competitively priced. 4 9

• buy or build COVER.pdf