Many businesses today struggle to keep pace with rapid market shifts and technology advancements — particularly in the realm of generative artificial intelligence (AI).  

As needs evolve, so do the skills that employees need to thrive, leading to a widening workforce readiness gap. Research by Cornerstone, in partnership with Lighthouse Research, found that 63% of enterprise leaders surveyed don’t believe their workforce is adaptable to change. The research also found that less than half (45%) of employers know of existing skills gaps and fully address them in their talent development strategies.   

Given the prevalence of this business challenge, it makes sense that we’re seeing corporate training providers team up to address skills shortages and drive workforce readiness.  

Let’s consider how Cornerstone’s recent acquisition of SkyHive Technologies Holdings Inc. (“SkyHive”) is positioned to help companies build a highly skilled, future-ready workforce.  

The “Why”  

Cornerstone has steadily acquired innovative organizations to help further establish its position in the market as a leading workforce agility solutions provider: In 2020, the company acquired Clustree and Saba Software; in 2022, it acquired EdCast and SumTotal Systems, and this year Cornerstone acquired Talespin in March, followed by SkyHive in May.  

Karthik Suri, Cornerstone’s chief product officer, says that Cornerstone’s acquisition of SkyHive, an AI-powered skills intelligence platform, made sense for a few reasons. First, SkyHive’s AI capabilities will help “turbocharge” Cornerstone’s own skills engine, which is powered by AI and machine learning.   

It will also help organizations begin the (challenging) process of workforce upskilling and reskilling by providing a data-driven skills structure and increased visibility into key gaps and strengths. “We found that this is the right time, at the right moment. The industry is at an inflection point, and [the acquisition] perfectly aligns with the launch of our workforce agility category” of solutions, Suri says, which includes Cornerstone Galaxy, its recently launched AI-powered workforce agility platform.  

Increasing Visibility for Future Readiness   

We’ve established that many companies struggle to both identify current skills gaps (and strengths) and to predict future ones.    

By parsing through terabytes of global workforce, labor market and economic data, SkyHive provides organizations with greater visibility into emerging, critical skills they’ll need to develop to stay competitive. It does this by plotting emerging and existing trends and mapping them against internal company data to help bridge the gap between “the skills desired and the skills held,” Suri says. Formulating a talent strategy around these insights “forms the basis of addressing the workforce readiness gap.”  

Through data-driven skills intelligence, combined with comprehensive talent development programs, Cornerstone can point organizations toward “strategic workforce planning,” Suri says, which is the key to staying ahead of change.  

Focus Areas Moving Forward  

Looking ahead, Suri says there are five “massive innovation opportunities” that Cornerstone is focused on leveraging:  

1. First and foremost, Cornerstone is focused on providing actionable, skills-based insights through its Cornerstone Talent Intelligence platform.  
2. Through its acquisition of Talespin, Cornerstone launched Cornerstone Immerse — a suite of virtual and extended reality solutions, which is an opportunity to help users deliver more engaging, immersive learning experiences.   
3. Cornerstone is “committed to being an open platform,” Suri says. With Cornerstone Extend, an open system of partners, integrations and application programming interfaces (APIs), users can seamlessly integrate their technologies.  
4. Cornerstone’s generative AI tool, Cornerstone Companion AI, is set to “completely reimagine” workflows for both employees and talent development professionals, Suri says.   
5. Through the acquisition of SkyHive, Cornerstone remains focused on delivering “skills transformation services” that can help bridge the workforce readiness gap and drive agility, Suri says.  

The pace of change facing businesses, and the market at large, is unlikely to slow down soon. However, AI-powered, data-driven solutions like Cornerstone and SkyHive can help organizations proactively upskill and reskill employees to stay competitive — no matter what challenges lie ahead.