IBM has announced that it will begin offering U.S. employees specialized saving accounts for training and education. The “learning accounts” are modeled on 401(k) retirement savings plans; IBM will contribute 50 cents for every dollar paid in by an employee to improve their skills. “This is truly path breaking,” Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School told The New York Times. “The significance is that it’s controlled by the individual…it reinvents how a company develops the social contract with its workers in a highly mobile, global economy.” IBM has earmarked $40 million over the next three years for contributions to the learning accounts,which will supplement its own $600 million annual budget for training. Expect a sea change in training meetings as other companies follow suit.