Your Very Own Corporate Training Lemonade Stand
The financial crisis of 2008 did quite a bit to put the world of training and development on an extreme diet – corporate/government training departments are working with skeleton crews and even scarcer resources, budgets are tight, and only the mission critical projects are being funded. The exciting thing about this type of environment is that you find folks that take lemons and make lemonade. When the economy is tight you find the larger companies gobbling up their weaker rivals (Trivantis bought Flypaper), partnerships being created among varying technologies (GoToMeeting & Skype), and new tools coming on line that will help customers get it done faster and with fewer resources (Articulate’s Storyline).
Mixed in with all of this there is an emerging set of firms that are taking things one step further and not just making lemonade, but creating lemonade stands for you to sell your very one special recipe — a lemonade stand where Davids can compete head-to-head with Goliath. Who am I talking about? OpenSesame and ZebraZapps.
OpenSesame provides independent contractors, firms (large and small) and corporate teams a marketplace to sell complete courses. ZebraZapps will revolutionize the industry by providing a marketplace, integrated with the tool, to sell individual course components/interactions. You might be asking, “Why is that so revolutionary?” Well, consider this: Before the advent of these marketplaces, if you wanted to sell your course or an individual course element, you not only needed the product, but you also had to create the marketing, the sales channel, the sales platform, etc. which created barriers to entry. Now, corporate training departments will be able to take the work that they do, repurpose it and turn what many companies see as a cost center into a revenue center.
Imagine this…. your corporate training team built a complex branching exercise using ZebraZapps. You strip away the proprietary information, leaving the structural framework, and then upload the interaction (your lemonade) onto the ZebraZapps marketplace (your very own lemonade stand) and other ZebraZapps users buy it (instant access to your customers).
Outside of the lemonade stand, the other aspect of ZebraZapps that is exciting is the full cost savings potential it holds for a training group. Not only does this tool allow for you to build Flash-like interactions without having to program (i.e. you need fewer resources), it will allow you to quickly find and purchase interactions/elements that you can customize (i.e. your production time goes down), all topped with the ability to sell your work as well (i.e. supplement your cost). Bundled together, this is a revolutionary concept in a leaner e-learning industry, and should be fun to watch.
I’m personally looking forward to watching the market continue to slim down and joining my fellow entrepreneurs in making lemonade!
Thanks so much for the mention! We invite any elearning seller to add their courses for sale in our marketplace, and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have questions.
Enjoyed the post, Tanya. Lower production time and costs, greater venues to distribute are definitely what content of any type is about now. I like the lemons to lemonade analogy. Saw a lot of that at ASTD, and the other things you mention. It’s also kind of like spinning gold out of straw. The leaner times and tighter ships are making all work harder but also getting more original and resourceful. (I wonder if anyone else read “Onward” yet, the Starbucks story that was prevalent at ASTD? I loved it and the lessons on reinvention without compromise. )
On another note, I didn’t know about GoToMeeting and Skype. use them both all the time. Thanks for informative stuff!
I really like this post.