If you are an individual or a small team not yet operating as a business, starting first on business model innovation sounds like it’s impossible. The world is full of long-standing companies that seem to be serving virtually every conceivable need.

However, can you serve those needs by employing new business models in a better way? Probably you can. And if you can, then you can be the first to compete based on business model innovation.

Notice that business model innovation usually requires more mental agility than resources, so the playing field is either level or may be slightly tilted in your direction. As you work on business model innovation, pay attention to closing the competitive door behind you with impossible-to-duplicate advantages, though, so that others cannot leapfrog past you if you want to enjoy the ultimate competitive advantage from business model innovation.

Let’s consider an example. Commercial art schools had been operating for decades when Education Management started out in 1969 by purchasing the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

How could the company be first with an improved business model in other geographic markets where commercial art was already being taught by for-profit schools and by tax exempt public or private colleges and universities?

What Education Management did was to focus the commercial art learning process on the needs of employers. In doing so, the com Continue reading »

When we talk about educational software, we notice a much evident feature attributed to them. They are rather less-commercialized in nature, unlike other popular software. Their main purpose is to impart education in an exclusively interactive way.

Thus using ultra innovative educational software will not help you make enormous money, but of course it can help the students understand concepts in a much better way.

The rising popularity of interactive based teaching, equipped with real-life experience, forced the professionals, dealing with education system, to escape from the conventional instruction based teaching. Rather, they adopted audiovisual design in classrooms empowered by educational software.

Undoubtedly, results with a difference were soon very much evident. The evaluators found that the learners, especially kids, were more entranced when the teacher used multimedia devices to elaborate any concept. The students, seeing visuals added with audio, were comprehensively comfortable and gave their maximum attention while the session went on.

Thus this satisfying evaluation led numerous companies to jump into the field of developing educational software. Of course, we can say, at some extent, that the competition amongst the companies to come up with the best educational software has given it a commercial undertone. However, this commercialization is solely meant for education, thus it can be bearable.

As the educati Continue reading »

Tim Knowles is the Lewis-Sebring Director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago. UEI is an innovative education program that combines charter schools, teacher education and research in their quest to provide reliable, excellent schooling for children in urban America.

How did you become involved with UEI?
I came to UEI as a practitioner. I served as a teacher in Bostwana and Boston, a school leader in New York City and a district leader in Boston. Along the way, I helped start several non-profits focused on teaching and leadership in urban schools –including the Boston Teacher Residency, the Boston Leadership Institute and Teach for America.

I came to the University of Chicago because it was doing something unusual. It was operating schools. It wanted to train aspiring, new and veteran teachers and leaders, for Chicago. And it was doing Research & Development (R&D) in a unique way – working closely with the Chicago Public Schools and school practitioners – and designing research, new tools and practice to inform policy and solve particular problems of practice.

I loved how the research, human capital development and school design was embedded in the real work. As I looked across the country, I quickly realized how rare it was for a research institution to be putting its stake so firmly in the world of practice. And I thought the absence of a sch Continue reading »