The reason why edtech companies are not able to completely disrupt the education industry even when the market is predicted to be very promising is because they are not able to create an impact with their product.
All edtech companies are simply selling their product hard and giving very little attention to creating a real time value out of their service or product with stakeholder interactions and inputs. It is majorly due to this reason that only a few EdTech startups are able to sustain and make it large while the others keep slogging.
The edupreneurs need to practice long termism and not concentrate on quick returns in the initial stages of the business setup. If a product is successfully created, profit automatically follows the business. This facet of creating value in business is aptly described in the video below.
Creating a value in the education business is a necessity and not simply an importance. Today’s market is flooded with a number of products and services. They are thus considered as a commodity which essentially need to have some kind of a value proportion in it to hit the consumers or enterprises. Absence of value component in the product can simply drive down the product to the bottom line in no time. Pricing is also a key factor here to help in high margin sales and eventually increase profitability and long term growth scale of the products.
In order to create value in the EdTech startup, enterprises need to consider a lot of aspects such as bringing quality to the service or product, pricing it well, package well the services in the product, transition qualitative preferences, provide expert advice and other important aspects. There should be least negligence in presenting content with clarity. We all know in the information age, ‘content is the King’ and how it the authentic content should be gelled up with equally powerful technology is what EdTech companies need to focus to create value in the solution. The idea is to bring in a balance in the product because, it is only a strong academic and operational EdTech product/solution that sustains in the market.
One who is in the education industry would agree with the fact that this industry works different from the other industries. Say when, a certain company is developing a technology solution that would support the teachers, merely including a ‘fluff’ in the product and ignoring pedagogy will fail to capture target audiences’ attention. The best way to analyze whether they are on the right track is to include teachers input about the product. Similarly, tools designed for administrative purposes can be packaged with services in totality once administrators’ inputs are taken into consideration. For more information on the value of teacher input in EdTech, click here.
No matter, how well the EdTech companies work on the marketing strategy, products/ solutions having no real time credibility in them simply fails to impress the consumers for long. More often than not, the education technology entrepreneurs assume they know everything on education industry where as the ground reality is that, without having a close relationship with the education stakeholders, it is impossible to know what challenges are crippling the sector. Without knowing the challenges, developing a technology solution that would disrupt the overall framework of any process would at the best remain a farfetched dream.
Most of the time, few EdTech products are merely a replica of any popular solution and thus fail to compete with the already settled product in the market for consumer loyalty to brands counts in the education industry as well. In addition, unoriginal products have no unique elements in them to impress the users. And to reflect upon what Bart Epstein who runs the Jefferson Education Accelerator says about education technology. To quote his words, “One should be making decisions about education technology based on merit, evidence of fit and evidence of efficacy.” So, it’s all about time, research and staying in touch with stakeholders that helps in creating a successful EdTech product.
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