NIIT announces strategic initiatives to drive Leadership in Digital Learning

-  Appoints Barry Libert, renowned Digital Board Member, CEO Advisor, Angel Investor & Author, as a Digital Advisor to the NIIT Board

-  Enters into an exclusive partnership with the leaders in Business Model Science OpenMatters to address the training of top management on Digital Transformation and Digital Leadership

New Delhi, October 17, 2016: NIIT Limited, a global leader in Skills and Talent Development, today announced their intention to be the leader in Digital Training and Development for leaders and their organizations in India, China and Emerging Markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Nigeria, as companies and their leaders struggle to survive and grow in today's network and platform centric world dominated by new-age digital disruptor companies.

With a strong focus on becoming the leader in the Digital Learning World and to further accelerate NIIT's own growth and profitability, the Company has charted a two-pronged business strategy:

  • First an Internal Initiative addressing the Digital Transformation of its entire business model to drive growth, value and profitability; and 
  • Second an External Initiative focusing on training and consulting of individual and corporate customers to enable them to succeed in the digital world.

To this end, NIIT has entered into an exclusive partnership with US based OpenMatters LLC, the leader in Business Model Science. Under this partnership, NIIT will bring the content and expertise developed by OpenMatters for Wharton's SEI Center, Knowledge@Wharton, and Harvard Business Review (HBR) to the India, China and Emerging Markets to address the leadership and management needs of the CXO/VP/Middle Management community.

In a related move, NIIT has appointed Barry Libert, CEO of OpenMatters as the Digital Advisor to the NIIT Board. Barry Libert, is a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School and an author and columnist at HBR, K@W, Forbes and the WSJ. As an expert in Digital Leadership and Business Model Transformation, Barry has co-authored numerous books, articles, training materials, workbooks and faculty guides. Barry leads a team of experts who are continuously researching digital leadership and business models using machine learning and advanced text mining while exploring the underlying drivers of value and growth in the age of platforms and networks.

NIIT's current digital transformation initiatives StackRoute and DigiNxt focus on Digital Innovator training and Digital Developer training respectively. Now this new relationship with Barry Libert and OpenMatters will expand its digital offerings - Digital to Leaders, and allow NIIT to address the end to end needs of organizations and governments seeking to reskill their entire workforce from CXOs to frontline workers to succeed in the digital age.

Speaking on this significant development Mr. Rahul Patwardhan, CEO NIIT Ltd., said, "This two tiered partnership is in line with our strategy to play a leadership role in the Digital Learning World, leveraging the exciting new age Digital Technologies that are impacting every industry and every company and their business model. First, we are delighted to have Barry Libert as a Digital board Advisor, whose valuable advice will help us build and execute a digital transformation roadmap for companies in India, China and Emerging Markets and our own company; and second, we are going to leverage the training materials developed for Wharton and HBR in the India, China and Emerging Markets"

Speaking on his appointment as a Digital Transformation Advisor to the NIIT Board, Barry Libert said, "This is indeed an exciting role that will allow us to offer our insights and advice to NIIT in order to partner with NIIT to help leaders throughout India, China and Emerging Markets drive their digital transformation agenda starting with leadership transformation and ending with more valuable business models."

According to the MIT Centre for Digital Business, 77% of organizations consider missing digital skills as the key hurdle to their transformation strategy. Therefore, Indian & Global IT Companies are investing heavily in building digital transformation skills to enable their clients transform digitally. 

About NIIT

Established in 1981, NIIT Limited, a global leader in Skills and Talent Development, offers multi-disciplinary learning management and training delivery solutions to corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries.

NIIT has three main lines of business across the globe- Corporate Learning Group, Skills and Careers Group, and School Learning Group.

NIIT's Corporate Learning Group (CLG) offers Managed Training Services (MTS) to market-leading companies in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. Our comprehensive suite of Managed Training Services includes custom Curriculum Design and Content Development, Learning Administration, Learning Delivery, Strategic Sourcing, Learning Technology, and Advisory Services. With a team of some of the world's finest learning professionals, NIIT is dedicated to helping customers increase the business value of learning and development (L&D). Built on the sound principles of 'Running Training like a Business', NIIT's Managed Training Services and best-in-class training processes enable customers to align business goals with L&D, reduce costs, realise measurable value, benefit from rock-solid operations, and increase business impact.

About OpenMatters

OpenMatters is the leader in Business Model Sciencetm.  It focuses on analysing business models, the missing ingredient in leadership and corporate governance (capital allocation) and the underlying sources of value.  The firm harnesses today's advanced technologies including machine learning and text mining to categorize and measure business model performance and capital allocation (both financial and non-financial) by boards and leaders which it calls The Business Graphtm.   Further, it has developed three products Training, Ratings and Rankings, and Investment Indices (ETF's) that help leaders and investors make better decisions in order to drive growth, value and profits.     

As Senior Fellow at the Wharton SEI Center, Barry Libert, along with Megan Beck (Wharton SEI Research Fellow), leads the dedicated research project called the 21st Century Enterprise. The mission of the 21st Century Enterprise is to examine the emergence of new digital platform and network based organizational models and their impact on leadership, growth, profits and value.   (see below research announcement)

https://news.wharton.upenn.edu/press-releases/2016/06/networks-and-platform-based-business-models-win-in-the-digital-age-according-to-a-new-study-by-the-wharton-school-of-the-university-of-pennsylvanias-sei-center-for-advanced-studies-in-m

The Wharton SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management is the world's first "think tank" for management education. The Wharton SEI Center ensures the relevance of management research and teaching to the evolving needs of business and society in the 21st century.

For more information, visit www.niit.com

For media queries, please contact:

Shivani Chakravarthy

Senior Director, Marketing

NIIT Corporate Learning Group

Email: shivanich@niit.com

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