Play with Learning

Developing business ideas

I have been running my own business for the best part of a year now.  In terms of the actual duration, it is only a few hundred days but in terms of experience it feels like a lifetime.

One of the greatest pleasures about running Play with Learning is the flexibility it gives me to do things that I believe are genuinely worthwhile;  one of those things is teaching.  Among various bits and bobs, I am running a final year undergraduate module entitled “Creative Media Enterprise” at Bradford University.  The focus of the course is to raise awareness of what working in the media industry is really like and it draws on my years of experience with the BBC and independent production companies.

This week, I revisited a very simple tool to capture a business’s headline characteristics. It is an effective way of thinking about the foundations of any plan.  It covers:

• Value proposition
• Customers & audiences
• Relationship building
• Competitors
• Partners
• Resources
• Activities
• Costs
• Distribution channels
• Revenue streams

The diagram below explains some of those terms but the crucial element of the tool is the emphasis on ‘value,’ that is,  what the business provides that customers and audiences might want or need.  The value proposition is the heart of any viable business idea because it establishes how distinctive and attractive the concept is.  Perhaps more importantly, it helps determine whether the idea is something that people would pay for or pay to be associated with.

business characteristics

It is an activity that I’ve done myself when I set up Play with Learning.  You can see my notes below.

business model example

You can download the business model template (pdf) to use for yourself.

Although the task of developing a viable business plan for a potential company is something that only a few of the group are considering right now, the activity is analogous to marketing the students themselves.  Hopefully, it will help develop the habit of demonstrating distinctiveness and value through well thought out plans and research.  And hopefully, whatever path the students ultimately take, these skills will prove valuable to them, their customers and clients, and their employers.

New Year’s Revolution

calendar

I’m excited about this year. I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions but this year is something of a revolution because I have something better. A new business. A new opportunity.

After years of working as an academic, for the BBC and a couple of great independent media companies, I have started my own business, Play with Learning; this blog is its online face.

I’ve decided to take the experience and expertise I’ve gained from working in educational media over the last 16 years and translate it into a service I can offer to a wider audience.  Play with Learning is my vehicle for working with partners to create meaningful experiences.  I want to exploit the combination of academic rigour, editorial integrity, innovative creativity and robust project management to provide real value both for content providers and end-users.

So what am I actually going to do? Three things, all focussed on optimising the user experience:

• Concept design and testing – helping to establish the most effective solution to needs and requirement for proposals and pre-production and then testing them with users during development
• Creative direction – helping teams to maintain the highest level of quality during production by acting as a ‘critical friend’
• Evaluation – helping to assess impact and return-on-investment on delivered products and services

I’m excited about it.  Maybe we could work together?  Why not drop me a line?  I’d love to see what opportunities there are for us.

Adapting to new technologies

A report in the current issue of the Journal of Service Research describes the changing nature of customer relationships and how new technologies have altered the way consumers interact with businesses.  The authors from Europe and the US describe a ‘pinball’ framework that characterises the to-ing and fro-ing of these more equal relationships, which they say is “highly disruptive” for those seeking to manage the relationships in a more traditional way.

“Managing customer relationships in the era of new media resembles pinball playing, with extensive information being available on brands and products which can multiply, but also interfere with the companies’ marketing messages (such as bumpers do when playing pinball) and make it more complex to control brand images and relationship outcomes such as customer equity.” (p324)

While paying particular attention to the ease of access epitomised by the increasing use of mobile technologies as consumer tools, the report seems to overlook the critical skills of discernment required to make educated decisions.  It suggests that search engines have:

“diminished consumers’ need to classify and organize information about products and markets and to store them in their internal memories.” (p320)

The researchers have, like most users, imbued search engines with enormous trustworthiness and impartiality.  They talk about the value of the ‘database of intentions’ to forecast future patterns of behaviour and personalise search results still further.

The downside of personalisation is the potential to only see what’s deemed specifically relevant.

This presents an interesting dilemma as search engine technologies become more sophisticated and present an ever-decreasing set of results because they reflect our preferences and previous behaviour.  The downside of personalisation is the potential to only see what’s deemed specifically relevant.  Far from enabling and empowering consumers, the ‘intelligence’ of these systems might well concentrate results to well-trodden paths and familiar territory.

All this reiterates the need to monitor the dominance of the likes of Google, and the importance of instilling a healthy sense of scepticism among users if we want to retain critical independence and the joy of serendipity.

Recession Risk

I spend a good deal of time trying to respond to the social media/ online/ learning needs of all sorts of organisations.  There is a commercial imperative to my efforts. Bluntly, I sell ideas.  But these are peculiar times. Recession changes the game.

In economic straits, all business, but public organisations especially, are less likely to take risks. Good ideas aren’t necessarily marketable because failure is a luxury associated with the safety net of good times. Lots of novel ideas have to be diluted to make them ‘safe.’ Organisations replicate, possible iterate but rarely innovate when ‘efficiency’ and cost-saving are the paramount considerations.  It is enormously frustrating. And possibly counter-productive. New ideas offer a way out.

So when does a good idea become a great idea? An idea worth risking?  And more importantly, how do you convince those wanting a service?