SkillSoft today announced the launch of inGenius, a social learning platform layer that enables customers to securely empower their employees to find, create and share knowledge assets and expertise with their colleagues as they utilise the extensive and trusted SkillSoft library of on-demand learning assets. SkillSoft officially unveiled inGenius to the public at Bersin & Associates IMPACT 2010 conference: The Business of Talent(R).

“Online social learning has become one of the primary elements of today’s modern corporate training model,” said Josh Bersin, CEO and president, Bersin Associates. “inGenius integrates social learning with structured content in unique and powerful ways, enabling SkillSoft customers to add knowledge sharing, collaboration, bookmarking, and other elements of informal learning right into their existing SkillSoft solutions.”

SkillSoft’s inGenius enables social learning by extending the value of expert information and infusing it with the knowledge and expertise of an organisation’s own employees. Unlike many stand-alone social networking applications, which most often lack a particular application focus, inGenius is built on SkillSoft’s trusted Books24x7 On Demand content collections containing more than 25,000 titles — digital books from leading publishers, analyst research reports, and white papers — as well as 1,300 videos of leading thought leaders and practitioners.

“A shift is taking place in how people discover, read and share business-critical information and insights. The shift fuses the amplification power of social networks with proven informal learning solutions to change one-to-many monologues into meaningful many-to-many conversations. SkillSoft’s approach recognises that information workers are not just learners, but also knowledge contributors, and provides organisations with a seamless way to capture and share their tacit wisdom,” said John Ambrose, senior vice president, strategy, corporate development and emerging business, SkillSoft. “Companies are just beginning to grasp the potential of social media through their personal experiences with products like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Wave. But they are searching for solutions that can harness the power of internal online communities to bring tangible value to the organisation. With inGenius, learning organisations worldwide can experience for themselves how social learning can foster greater collaboration and results by leveraging SkillSoft’s secure, trusted and proven e-learning software and content.”

The Books24x7 library includes more than 25,000 titles, on-demand resources comprising digitised IT and business books, book summaries and videos on a wide range of relevant information technology, business skills, computer desktop skills and compliance subjects.

inGenius enhances SkillSoft’s core learning assets with a feature set that enables learners to utilise content assets as seeds of discussion and to add community content (“co-content”) including notes, comments and ratings that add a unique layer of context and relevance, specific to their organisation. SkillSoft further enhances the social learning experience with opportunities to build connections and allow sharing between learners. inGenius also enables learners to discover knowledgeable colleagues by searching social profiles.

Release 1.0 of inGenius is available through the Books24x7 On Demand Platform.

Future releases of inGenius will extend support to SkillSoft’s SkillPort LMS and other e-learning modules.