This newsletter will be a little looser, more anecdotal. I’m still trying to figure out the right tone. It’s a couple of examples of how to validate new product ideas from my time at Multiverse. Next week, I’m looking at the future of coding bootcamps. Enjoy!
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My favorite thing about consulting is spotting consistent problems. Actually, my favorite thing about consulting is not having a boss. So maybe spotting problems is my second favorite thing.
Anyway, one of the consistent problems I’m seeing recently is clients don’t know which new learning products to create.
They come to me for one of two reasons:
Lack of growth (need new products in order to grow)
Existing product is in decline, and therefore need new products
They ask: “how do you find and validate new product ideas?” I want to look at this in more detail today as I get asked this question a lot. A typical ask might go something like this:
Client: we have one successful course already, but we can't work out what to build next. How do we decide where to focus?
In most cases, the client has built a curriculum in a subject area where they are the expert, whether it be digital marketing, painting, data or filmmaking. The particular topic doesn’t matter: just the fact that, typically, the client is also the subject matter expert. They wrote the first course. The course has been successful. And now they're looking for new topic areas to build within.
But they're stuck. They don’t know which product to work on next. They've exhausted their knowledge base, and they are now looking at topic areas in which they are not experts. They feel overwhelmed. Should they stay in familiar territory and build an entry-level or an advanced course for their existing product? Or should they adapt their existing offering for a new topic area?
They have analysis paralysis. They have a massive list of products that they could build, likely from student and client feedback, but they don't know where to start to whittle down the possibilities to 1 or 2 concrete ideas that they can test with real clients.
Frameworks to test.
I use a standard software development framework to validate new ideas. This means researching a bunch of ideas, validating the best ones with real users, and then building the product.
This is part of the process of finding product-market fit. Dan Olsen talks about the concept in the Lean Product Playbook, and he identifies the following steps all products go through to find product-market fit:
Determine your audience
Identify underserved needs
Define your value proposition
Specify the minimum feature set
Create a minimum viable product
Test it with users
It’s always nice to look at a pyramid, so here’s where PMF1 fits when building software:
Source: PMF Academy
At the very start of this process we need to determine our audience. At this stage, I’m just trying to get to the next part of the process. I’m trying to get from “we have all these ideas and don’t know where to focus” to “we have 1—2 ideas to test with a client” to find what the underserved needs are.
But where do you find the inputs to get a sense of who your audience is? I’m going to talk about one very specific method we used at Multiverse which is applicable for most industries. The example is UK-specific, but it works regardless of the country, as long as there is data available.
The size of the potential market is what I always want to know first. How can you find this out?
Market-sizing is tough. On the one hand, there are a lot of think tanks producing reports around the skills gap, and finding a report that validates your assumption that there is a gap in a particular skill area is straightforward.
But I was always wary of large numbers.
For example, a quick search for ‘digital skills gap uk’ throws up 43 million results. And, while articles with data like 870,000 digital and tech job vacancies in the UK make splashy posts on LinkedIn and help Deloitte sell digital transformation projects, they don't tell you exactly how many learners there are for your potential product.
A much better source, particularly in the UK, is the government data released each month for apprenticeship starts. This is free, open-source data showing enrollments by apprenticeship programs, by subject.
You couldn't ask for a better data set for analyzing trends, month-by-month, year-by-year. The data tells you which subject areas are growing, which are decreasing, and which new ones you should keep an eye on.
The programs are all backed by government standards and created by industry. And all new standards are developed by companies themselves, so you know that the subjects taught are ones that companies actually need skills in.
Even if your company isn't on the apprenticeship levy, it's a rich data source for seeing where companies are spending L&D budgets and which areas you could invest in.
Let's say I was interested in designing a new program in the creative arts. A list of creative programs on the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) throws up some interesting options to investigate. An example:
Looking at this list, two areas jump out immediately. Firstly, the market size of the 'Junior Content Producer' program is nine times higher than the 2nd largest on the list. Is there an opportunity to create a program in this space?
I spent 10 minutes looking at the list of providers and the curricula for each program and a couple of trends became apparent. Firstly, there's a high number of providers but low innovation. Most programs look the same, so it's a volume game.
Source: Find Apprenticeship Training
The majority of the provision is happening through local colleges but there are a few outlier providers who focus on specific industries. For example, Bauer Academy focuses on specific, high-quality media agencies (with whom they have particular partnerships). An opportunity here could be for a training provider to target the TV or Film industry through strong employer partnerships with a highly-specialized program because most other providers offer bland, generic offerings.
That becomes the idea to validate.
Or, let's say I thought there was a gap in the market for cyber training. Cyber is a broad term; it means different things to different employers. But we can assume there's a need for comprehensive cyber-literacy for the general population (e.g., how to safeguard your computer against cyber attacks, or basic terms every employee needs to understand), a need for specialists who can protect an organization from cyber attacks, and a need for managers to oversee cyber teams.
That's a lot of different learner personas. And a really broad market. How can we narrow this down to one or two ideas to validate with employers?
The apprentice starts across the last 7 years would help me pinpoint where to direct my research with potential employers. For example, looking at this list, the number of Cyber Intrusion Analyst starts is nowhere near the number of Cyber Security Technologist starts.
What is the difference between a Cyber Security Technologists and a Cyber Intrusion Analysts? I'm not sure, but a quick look at the curriculum for both tells me an Analyst is tasked with "detecting breaches".
In contrast, a Technologist "will apply an understanding of cyber security to protect organizations, systems, information, personal data and people from attacks and unauthorized access."
The Technologist standard seems broader and vaguer. And the high number of starts implies that this type of program is more aligned with what organizations are looking for, rather than a specialized program.
That's the idea to validate.
The point here is not to get too bogged down in statistics, data, and research. The goal is to identify an idea that you know is in demand, create a basic program overview, and take that to a client/user to react. You’re not trying to create the perfect curriculum at this stage.
At this early stage of curriculum validation, this is enough detail for now. This is all the detail we need to start looking at what the underserved needs are for clients looking for training in either of these areas. It allows me to focus and specialize later.
Other notes
I’ve been enjoying Hannes Aichmayr’s The EdTech Edge newsletter. It’s early days but it looks like a good resource for funding news and acquisitions in European EdTech.
I’m keeping an eye on greenworkx who launched this week. They’re aiming to be the Multiverse for green skills. I need to learn more about the green skills landscape. From what I’ve heard, there’s a lot of buzz from consulting firms about the skills gap, but not a lot of demand from clients yet.
Wonkhe’s Monday newsletter has quickly become my go-to source for higher education news in the UK. As the same suggests, it’s very much aimed at policy wonks. But it manages to toe the line between being accessible to general readers and like an episode of The Thick of It.
If you want to learn more, Emerge Education is doing good work in this area through its PMF Academy. I wrote a piece a few months ago about this topic (Product market discovery for curriculum). If you're interested in a more formal course to go through, I can highly recommend the Exploration Bootcamp by John Danner and Transcend Network.