The Bottom Line Up Front

The life sciences learning landscape is at an inflection point.

Our conversations at LTEN 2025 revealed that while the industry has embraced new formats and technologies, the fundamental challenge remains unchanged: how do we create learning experiences that drive measurable business impact? The answer isn’t in choosing between traditional and modern approaches—it’s in applying the science of learning to make strategic decisions about when, how, and why we deploy each method.

Three Strategic Imperatives from LTEN 2025

1. Technology + Organizational Alignment = Exponential Impact

A workshop by Teva, Collaborative Excellence: Transforming Organizational Development through HR and Training Synergy, highlighted our first strategic imperative.  It was an instructive case study, showcasing the significant positive impact that collaboration between HR and Training had at Teva. Teva’s transformation story began with a familiar challenge: HR and Training operated as separate functions, budgets were siloed with Training rather than HR, and their global operations remained fragmented. Their objective was clear—evaluate commercial sales resources to identify opportunities for reuse across other functions globally while driving increased efficiencies and shared funding.

The breakthrough came when they recognized that “multiple functions across Commercial, Medical, and Access wanted to deploy an AM model using different vendors.” Rather than solving this with better vendor management or technology standardization alone, they addressed the underlying coordination challenge by creating a critical human bridge: the Talent Management liaison role.

The Human Element That Made the Technology Work: This liaison role became the linchpin of their transformation—creating career opportunities for both HR and training through cross-functional exposure while acting as the communication bridge between functions. The liaison sends out “The Talent Management Minute” newsletter, coordinates leadership course opportunities, and ensures that learning content developed by one function gets adapted and deployed across others.

But Technology Implementation Was Equally Crucial: Teva deployed a talent marketplace platform that enables employees to find development opportunities across the organization. Simultaneously, they’re leveraging AI to analyze talent reviews, providing insights that human reviewers alone couldn’t generate at scale. Their AI initiatives include both external partnerships and plans to bring capabilities in-house, with dedicated HR analytics resources feeding all reviews into systems that provide AI-powered growth feedback.

This human-centered approach to organizational integration, supported by sophisticated technology platforms, enabled their broader technology investments to flourish while creating the “one-stop shop L&D website” that consolidates all resources into a single access point.

The Salience Learning Perspective: The most successful life sciences companies aren’t choosing between organizational design and technology investment—they’re recognizing that sustainable change requires both dedicated human advocates who can navigate organizational complexity AND robust technology platforms that can deliver personalized, scalable solutions. Teva’s success came from combining human champions with powerful tools like talent marketplace and AI analytics to ensure technology serves learning and professional development outcomes rather than creating additional complexity.

Research in change management shows that technology adoption fails most often due to organizational misalignment, not technical limitations. When Teva created shared accountability through their Talent Management liaison role and consolidated vendor relationships, they didn’t just save money—they created the human-centered organizational foundation that allowed their technology investments to deliver measurable impact across global operations.

2. The Microlearning Paradox: When Less Becomes Nothing

The microlearning session (Microlearning In and Out of the Flow of Work) raised an uncomfortable question that resonates beyond the conference walls: “Is microlearning really learning or simply targeted marketing messages?” The presenter’s provocative statement—”Marketing is microlearning”—forced a critical examination of what we’re actually delivering to learners.

The Uncomfortable Similarities: Both microlearning and marketing messages share striking characteristics: short, bite-sized content with compelling hooks designed to drive specific actions. Both rely on open rates and click-through analytics to measure success. Both use iterative deployment to continuously refine messaging. Both can be consumed passively without significant time commitment. And crucially, both can feel engaging without creating lasting change.

The Critical Differences That Matter: True microlearning differs from marketing in three fundamental ways:

• Cognitive Architecture: Learning micromodules are designed around spaced repetition, active recall, and knowledge consolidation—not just message retention. Marketing optimizes for immediate action; learning optimizes for long-term competency development.
• Behavioral Outcomes: Marketing messages seek compliance (“complete this task”); learning experiences build capability (“develop this skill to perform better across situations”).
• Measurement Horizon: Marketing success is measured in weeks (campaign effectiveness); learning impact requires months or years to properly assess.

The Diagnostic Question: The litmus test isn’t format or delivery mechanism—it’s whether the intervention builds transferable cognitive skills or simply delivers information. When microlearning focuses on compliance training through “passive learning” with “no commitment to sit for 30 minutes,” it’s operating more like internal marketing than skill development.

The Evidence We’re Missing: While presenters celebrated metrics like “completion rates” and “engagement,” the deeper measurement question remained unanswered. Can learners apply the knowledge in novel situations? Do they retain and transfer the knowledge and skills beyond the immediate context? These questions separate genuine learning from sophisticated content consumption.

The Salience Learning Perspective: Microlearning excels as a reinforcement mechanism and just-in-time performance support when designed with learning science principles, but it cannot replace foundational skill building. The most effective life sciences organizations will use microlearning strategically—not as a cost-cutting measure to replace comprehensive training, but as a scientifically-designed component of spaced repetition and knowledge consolidation that builds upon deeper learning experiences.

The critical success factor is todesign microlearning with clear behavioral objectives tied to business outcomes, not engagement metrics. If your microlearning can’t answer “What specific decision-making capability will this build?” rather than just “What action will this prompt?” it’s content marketing, not learning.

3. From Multichannel to Omnichannel: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

The Novartis omnichannel discussion (From Basics to BluePrint: Crafting an Omnichannel Training Roadmap) revealed a sobering industry reality that extends far beyond their organization: even after four years of integrating “omnichannel tactics” and multimillion-dollar digital transformation investments, 80% of HCPs still report receiving generic, impersonal communications from pharmaceutical companies, and fewer than 20% feel personally engaged. Despite the pressure to show and realize impact from huge global and regional digital transformation programs, examples of successful full-scale omnichannel overhauls in pharma remain rare.

The Root Cause Analysis: Session discussions revealed two distinct but interconnected problems. First, most functions beyond marketing remain unclear about why omnichannel approaches are relevant to their specific roles—a fundamental awareness and education challenge. Second, even when teams understand the concept, organizations haven’t modified their field team incentive structures or performance metrics to align with omnichannel engagement modalities beyond traditional face-to-face calls—a systemic organizational alignment problem.

The Training Disconnect: The most telling insight came from recognizing that we “often only train on the technology functionality versus the why for omnichannel, why it benefits the field team, and how it can enhance customer engagement.” This explains why adoption or effective utilization of omnichannel tools or tactics remains inconsistent despite significant technology investments—we’re teaching people how to use tools without helping them understand the strategic thinking that makes those tools valuable.

The Engagement Reality: Consider the stark mathematics of modern HCP interactions: average face-to-face interactions last just 5-6 minutes, while virtual interactions extend to 20-25 minutes. Yet most training focuses on maximizing the brief face-to-face encounter rather than leveraging the extended engagement opportunity that virtual channels provide. Field teams now navigate core communication channels including phone, email, face-to-face, virtual meetings, conferences, text, journal clubs, LinkedIn, and social media platforms—but without the strategic framework to orchestrate these touchpoints effectively.

The Netflix Paradigm: Presenters used analogies of Netflix and Pandora to illustrate true omnichannel thinking—platforms that create personalized, sequential experiences rather than delivering the same content across different channels. This analogy crystallizes what’s missing: most pharmaceutical “omnichannel” approaches are still multichannel in disguise, pushing identical messages through different platforms rather than creating curated, progressive experiences.

The 4Cs Framework in Action: Novartis’ breakthrough was training field teams to apply the 4Cs—Content (right content), Cadence (right time), Channel (right modality), Customer (right personalization)—while teaching them to ask HCPs directly about their preferred information channels. This simple question—”How do you prefer to receive information?”—represents a fundamental shift from assumption-based to customer-directed engagement strategy. Yet this skill set is extremely critical to get right and execute well, given the limited time windows and high stakes of each interaction.

How These Industry Challenges Manifest at the Field Level:  These broader organizational issues create predictable downstream effects for field teams, who bear the burden of implementing omnichannel strategies without proper support systems. The session revealed several critical challenges and their corresponding solutions:

Challenge	Solution
Training focuses on functionality rather than strategic skills	Develop critical thinking capabilities that enable strategic decision-making across any channel or technology
Leadership skepticism about non-F2F channels and “pilot fatigue” from failed implementations	Integrate omnichannel planning into core business processes and pilot next best action (NBA) with selected clients to build confidence through measurable progress
Fear that technology diminishes the representative’s role value	Train teams to meaningfully engage with system recommendations—teaching them to caveat next best action suggestions and provide intelligent input that improves algorithmic effectiveness rather than passively accepting suggestions

This framework above transforms omnichannel from a technology burden into a strategic capability that enhances rather than threatens traditional relationship-building skills, while addressing the foundational skills gaps that enable success across all engagement modalities.

The Integration Opportunity: The session revealed that omnichannel success requires critical thinking skills, business planning integration, and the ability to adapt messaging based on real-time feedback. When organizations train on omnichannel thinking rather than omnichannel tools, they’re building strategic capabilities that transfer beyond customer engagement to enhanced performance across changing business environments and technology landscapes.

The Convergence: Organizational Design, Learning Science, and Business Reality

These three strategic shifts discussed above aren’t isolated trends—they’re interconnected challenges that require integrated solutions. Teva’s organizational restructuring enabled more effective use of microlearning and omnichannel approaches. Novartis’ omnichannel mindset training creates the critical thinking foundation that makes microlearning reinforcement more effective. And AI technologies, when properly applied, can support all three initiatives by providing the analytics and personalization that drive business impact.

The most successful organizations aren’t choosing between these approaches; they’re using learning science principles to determine the optimal combination for specific business challenges and learner needs.

These three insights from LTEN 2025 illuminate a fundamental truth: the life sciences industry’s most pressing learning challenges aren’t solved by choosing better technologies or formats—they’re solved by applying learning science principles more rigorously to organizational and instructional design decisions.

The Common Thread: Whether it’s Teva’s need for human liaison roles to make technology effective, the microlearning challenge of building genuine cognitive capabilities rather than delivering sophisticated content marketing, or the omnichannel requirement for strategic thinking skills rather than tool training—each situation demands the same core competency: the ability to distinguish between surface-level implementation and deep, transferable learning.

The Salience Learning Insight: This convergence validates our fundamental belief that bringing the science of learning to the business of science requires more than industry expertise or educational theory alone. It requires the combination of both perspectives to make strategic decisions about when human intervention amplifies technology, when learning creates lasting capability versus temporary compliance, and when mindset development trumps tactical training.

What This Means for Life Sciences Learning Leaders

The path forward isn’t about adopting new trends—it’s about applying learning science principles more systematically to evaluate and improve every learning intervention, whether it’s organizational restructuring, microlearning deployment, or omnichannel capability development.

Strategic Questions to Guide Decisions:

1. For any technology implementation: What human advocacy and coordination roles need to exist for this technology to deliver measurable business impact rather than just operational efficiency?
2. For any short-form content initiative: Are we building transferable cognitive capabilities that improve decision-making across contexts, or are we delivering information more efficiently without changing competency levels?
3. For any cross-functional capability development: Are we teaching strategic thinking frameworks that enable adaptation to changing circumstances, or are we training people to follow specific procedures and use particular tools?

Investment Priorities:

1. Learning Science Applied to Organizational Design: Create roles and structures that enable learning transfer across functions while maintaining accountability for business outcomes.
2. Evidence-Based Learning Differentiation: Develop measurement approaches that distinguish between content consumption and capability development, ensuring learning investments create lasting competitive advantage.
3. Strategic Capability Architecture: Build foundational thinking skills that remain valuable regardless of technological or procedural changes, reducing training costs while increasing adaptability.

The Salience Learning Perspective: Science-Based Integration

The conversations at LTEN 2025 reinforced our core belief: the most successful life sciences learning initiatives combine deep industry expertise with rigorous application of learning science principles. The companies making genuine progress—like Teva’s organizational integration and Novartis’ omnichannel mindset training—aren’t chasing individual trends. They’re applying timeless principles of adult learning to create integrated solutions for modern business challenges.

The industry’s next competitive advantage won’t come from choosing between traditional and emerging learning modalities, or from adopting new technologies faster than competitors. It will come from applying learning science more rigorously to create seamless, personalized learning ecosystems that drive measurable business outcomes.

Whether it’s Teva’s “You own your own growth and development—we provide the tools and resources” approach, or the recognition that learners now “work on laptops but learn on phones,” the most effective solutions combine organizational design, measurement discipline, and learner-centric delivery in ways that honor both human psychology and business reality.

Salience Learning partners with life sciences organizations to create transformative learning experiences that drive business impact. Learn more about our science-based approach at www.saliencelearning.com.