Posts from — September 2009

Ingenia-training Pitch

Strengths:

One of the strengths of the pitch is company president, Ramona Materi.  She is a very convincing speaker who seemingly has excellent credentials.  The company has a small highly skilled management team.  Given the weak domestic market, and stiff international competition this may be an advantage.  Ingenia seems to have a clear vision and is aware that survival may be determined by how well it positions itself in the international market place.  The company has identified potential in the Vietnamese market and has developed a strategy to tap into that market.  The company is aware that needs to establish business relationships with multinational companies—such as Shell—operating within Vietnam, and that the Vietnamese, as a whole, highly value education. Ingenia has also recognized that the Vietnamese market is essentially free of competition.

Weaknesses:

The pitch also has a number of weaknesses.  Ingenia doesn’t seem to have a competitive product or technical innovation to set the company apart from its competitors.  Moreover, the domestic market is very weak and, if for some reason, the company were to be excluded from the Vietnamese market, it may experience financial difficulties.  It also seems that the company does not have a great deal of confidence in it ability to enforce contractual obligations entered into with the Vietnamese Government, and for that reason, stresses that it will seek business relationships with multinational corporations who can be held responsible to their legally binding agreements.  On the surface, this may add weight to Ingenia’s pitch; however, one of the key advantages alluded to in the pitch is that the company is the company is positioning itself to take advantage of an untapped market—“off the beaten track”—but its relationships are with internationally based companies, and the target market is not really all that insular.

Was the pitch effective?   The pitch was effective enough to get my attention; however, I am not convinced Ingenia has identified a secure enough target market, and for this reason I would not be interested in investing in the venture.

I hope my question makes sense here …

I was wondering when is the good time to start working on Assignment # 1 , is it now? after module 2? after module 3? Will the assignment reflect on the material/discussions/acitivites of modules 2 & 3?

I did a quick search for the term “environmental analysis” in our blog but didn’t find references within the content of the modules mentioned above. This is why i got confused 🙁

Cheers,

Ammar

I’ve been reading ahead in prep for our group presentation and I think I came upon an incorrect link in Mod. 4. The text that houses this link is:

“Review a “web 0.0″ article claiming there is no possible business model in web 2.0″

When you click on the link it takes you to CrowdTrust’s homepage.

hi team 8,

I believe we have all connected on email thus far.  If anybody is not finding us in group 8, please feel free to email me at jenware2000@gmail.com

kind regards,

jen wong

Background

A pitch is presented to make the case for Royal Roads University to establish an Open Courseware initiative.

Analysis

Referring to the successful open courseware initiative at MIT, the pitcher presents some compelling arguments in favour of her venture. She suggests that providing open access to courses will help with student and faculty recruitment and the marketing of Royal Roads’ high-quality programming thereby enhancing the university’s reputation. Additional benefits of using open courseware are also mentioned including increased global access and contributions being made to the building of a learning society. The pitcher also sets up and proceeds to knock down what could be the two greatest arguments against the open courseware initiative: a possible decrease in tuition paid by those who are content to learn for free and the chance that others could steal content and profit by resale. According to the pitcher, academic credit is not given to students who don’t pay tuition and course content is subject to copyright laws.

Interestingly, only seven minutes were used to pitch the idea and, as an EVA, I felt the pitcher left me hanging with too many unanswered questions. For example, the pitch provides no information regarding how the plans will be carried out, so an EVA is left wondering what types of resources are necessary to start and maintain the venture. Since the initiative has already been implemented at MIT, it would  help to have highlighted what kind of return was seen on their investment. Lastly, while the pitcher promotes Royal Roads as a place of innovation, specifics regarding the qualifications personnel that will potentially run the venture were missing from the pitch.

Overall, I would not be willing to risk my investment capital on this proposition mostly because I think MIT already has the stronghold on this market. No offense to Royal Roads, but MIT is a well-known and prestigious institute. If people simply want to use Open Courseware for learning, they’ll turn to MIT first. After all, it is free. While I acknowledge that Royal Roads might be rewarded with a modest increase in student recruitment through this venture, I think there might be other ways to promote and market a university if they wish to increase the number of paying students.

Background

Ingenia is a consulting service based in Vancouver, which offers “E-learning strategy development and instructional design of classroom and online courses”. Ramona Materi, president of Ingenia pitches a plan to establish her company a major learning services provider in Vietnam.

Analysis

In her pitch, Ramona mentions several potential challenges to her company. First she states that although her team is based in Vancouver, there is no home market for her venture plans. However, she claims that conditions are favourable for targeting the country of Vietnam because there are presently few e-learning players in the market place, the country’s population is relatively young, and there has been recent global investment from other countries. Ramona is also realistic about her North American competitors stating competition is strong, yet appears confident that some prior experiences in Vietnam and the timeliness of her opportunity gives her company somewhat of a competitive edge.

Ingenia claims to be an industry leader in E-learning comprised of a highly qualified core team. Many members of the team hold masters degrees or higher. Ramona proclaims herself as a “guru” in the field and supports her claim by highlighting her involvement in several international speaking arrangements. The need to host their data on a low-bandwidth server based in Vancouver is mentioned along with the obvious need for quality language translation resources. Although it is unclear whether these resources have been secured, it seems reasonable to assume Ramona will be able to do so.

Though I would need to further investigate the potential E-learning markets in Vietnam, Ramona appears to have done her homework and presents a fairly compelling case. I would to have heard more data and statistics regarding the potential market size. I need to know more information about access to the required technology as well as literacy rates, living conditions, education levels etc.

As an educational venture analyst, I have a few concerns about Ramona’s pitch. First, I would like to know more about the competitors in this market. Ramona mentions that a public/private Japanese consortium is already active in E-learning in Vietnam, but to what extent are they involved? One could reasonably assume that the Japanese consortium would have more experience and background in the Vietnamese market. This doesn’t mean there is not room for Ingenia in Vietnam’s e-learning market; however, the potential for the competition to limit large-scale clientele and revenue certainly exists in the long run.

Secondly, as an EVA, I question Ingenia’s plans to charge its investors $40,000 to fund market development trips to Vietnam for two people, four times in 15 months. If the company truly wishes to establish a presence in Vietnam before the competition does, why limit yourself to business trips for only two people. While I acknowledge times have changed and the beauty of Ingenia’s services is that they can technically be offered from a distance, I would have like to have heard plans to relocate some staff to Vietnam. The plans to only travel there made me question the level of commitment toward the venture. I could be wrong, but since I’m the one deciding to hand over $100, 000 I think I’m entitled to an opinion here.

For many of you, the concepts within Module 2 this week may be the most unfamiliar in the whole course.  The world of start-ups and venture capitalist seems a long way from the classroom.   However, every new venture has to start somewhere, and this critical phase of constructing a viable business framework around a great new idea is as essential as training before running a marathon.   Academics tend to believe otherwise – they come up with original ideas all the time and expect that the idea itself is all that matters.  It’s analogous to the conceit of a man who believes his contribution to creating a baby is all that matters.   The vast majority of ideas never become born as ventures because the gestation phase is so tough.

When we first launched 522 we included a module where we taught students how to read and analyse corporate financials.  While that skill is essential to every true entrepreneur (and educational venture analyst), it was too much for 522.  This isn’t a “business” course.  We decided instead to concentrate on the “pitch” because it is the purest, most concentrated, most accessible, and most social form of any venture.  It’s all in the story.  Just remember that you’ve got to be clear-minded and humble about your abilities to evaluate venture pitches.  If there isn’t something incredible or very hard to understand in any pitch, then it almost certainly isn’t breaking new ground.   Try to imagine what the pitches for applications like Twitter or Facebook might have sounded like before everyone knew what they were.  This module is aimed to help you start tuning your venture instincts.

Dive in and have fun!

Guy talks about his book, the “Art of the Start”. Youtube has various talking Guy Kawasaki clips but the first listed is short and sweet. In contrast to David Heinemeir, he emphasizes creating meaning rather than profit as being core to a business. Sure, David also alludes to fixing little problems, making the world better, and improving the quality of life. The book has a chapter on pitches for different purposes and humourous suggestions such as making the presentation font big for the eyesight of those successful but usually older venture capitalists who will be watching.  One possible way of reading content on inter/intrepreneurship online is to look for it in books 24×7.

My name is Liz Hood and I am a media specialist in Rock Hill, SC,  USA.  (I believe we are called teacher-librarians in Canada). I currently serve in an IB-MYP school.While I am currently involved in K-12 education, my goal with the MET program is to move to training educators in the best implementation of technology within their specific curriculum area. I have completed 6 MET classes thus far and plan to graduate in May 2010.

Throughout my educational career, I have been fascinated by the dichotomy which exists between the business world and the educational arena. This course will provide business perspectives on education. I am in hopes that the education as an industry will incorporate some of the best practices evidenced in successful business ventures, though I myself struggle with the implementation.

My educational background is quite eclectic. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs, a Master’s degree in Spanish and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science.  I have worked as a K-12 educator for 20 years, evenly split between teaching Spanish and being a media specialist. I hold National Board Certification as a library media specialist, a rigorous process  in the USA, which greatly influenced my teaching.

I fell in love with Canada virtually and have spent the last two summers travelling throughout BC, this past summer with my two boys. All 3 of us loved it. Our goal is to emigrate to the west coast of Canada.

Canada Day 2009 @ Prince George Park

Ammar Al-Attiyat

Hi Everyone,

My name is Ammar Al-Attiyat, I live and work in Cairo, Egypt (but my home country is Jordan), with ETEC 512 I’m taking my 3rd and 4th courses this semester.

I work for a technology company offering e-Learning products and services to clients from the Higher Education and Corporate markets. I manage a courseware development team (mainly instructional designers, multimedia specialists, content developers …etc). Also part of my job is to carry all Pre-Sales activities and support our sales team in the Middle East region (verrrrrrrrry busy traveling schedule most of the time 🙁 !!

It’s now 21 years since I earned my college degree (BSc, Computer Science), I spent the last 12 years of my career working directly with educational technology products and solutions.

My objective is to complement the practitioner/technologist experience I have with the business/theory behind it, I’ve never practiced teaching or training (though I’ve been coaching my subordinates, good or bad coach that’s another story 🙂 … coming from workplace environment, I have personal interest in Adult and Informal Learning (Web 2.0/eLearning 2.0  related technologies).

I’m father of two boys (11G & 7G) they attend an Off-Shore BC school here in Egypt.

I look forward to interact and learn from all of you.

Cheers,
Ammar