Comments on Founders no 1
From blogs.ubc.ca/etec522Sept2013
Week 4: Entrepreneurial bootcamp
dchrisman 11:07 pm on September 29, 2013
John Baker, President and CEO of Desire 2 Learn
Desire to Learn founder, President and CEO John Baker started the company in 1999. Desire to Learn has since grown immensely as a company, and distributes new and innovative platform for education worldwide. They provided the LMS that my school board currently uses for both e-learning courses, as well as blended learning programs. They will also help to create programs to meet the needs of the customer, and also sell to Fortune 100 Companies as well.
Baker started this company when he was only 22 years old, and still attending school. His educational background is in System Design Engineering, and in Management. From this background, it seems that he has unique abilities to be both an entrepreneur, and a CEO. This has been further proven by several entrepreneur awards that he has received, and that his company was recently named one of the best small and medium companies to work for, demonstrating his ability to lead a successful team, as well as keep them motivated.
As for Baker’s motivation for his company, he has a strong belief in using technology to improve society, as well as supporting other young entrepreneurs. This can be seen from his personal life, and the many different boards he sits on. He also uses both business and personal funds to help support those entrepreneurs who are also trying to use technology for societal good. This makes him and his business also really show how important that double bottom line is.
Baker’s leadership team is also filled with successful individuals who have a strong background in business and education. Several of his top team have gone back to colleges and universities to teach in their perspective field, which also gives them a unique view of what educators would want in their LMS programs. Although their backgrounds are varied, many also have strong backgrounds in successfully running businesses, including several major companies. I believe that since Baker started his company so young, that it is important that he also has some more seasoned veterans on the board.
When looking at the backgrounds of this successful team, I feel I am far from ready to start my own venture. I do not feel as though I have the connections to make a strong enough team to run a successful business, and I feel as though my own personal understanding of business is not yet where it would need to be. Although I do feel as though I have more business knowledge that many entrepreneurs, I do not feel confident in my own knowledge yet, or in my ideas, especially when seeing how varied these background are.
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Comment by Janette
jiorns 10:39 am on October 3, 2013
D2L is an impressive company, and the founder and CEO John Baker a very inspirational person.
Apart from the background and qualities of John Baker mentioned in the leading post, I think he must also be the epitamy of a lifelong learner – moving his own knowledge forward all the time to be able to compete in the educational technology market and have an informed vision of what to do next.
D2L has recently acquired a company, Knowillage. See http://desire2learn.com/
It takes D2L’s business into a different field, but it is a related field, and one that is emerging in learning technology – personalised learning environments.
While learning is often structured on a LMS (course and program structure), personal learning environments are not so structured. Knowillage is about adaptive content and quizzes, with analytics embedded that can directing a student’s learning according to their performance.
This type of personal learning environment enables “accelerated learning”. Smart stuff. http://knowillage.com/
D2L is a company to watch, for sure.
