Do you like to tell stories? Do you like the “show and tell” approach as a way to make a difference in the world? Do you like to help people discover their true potential? Then edupreneurship is your game. Today it is easy to make a success (and develop a business) by capitalizing your knowledge and skills and helping people reach their true potential! Welcome to the edupreneurship domain!
Edupreneurship As A Business Paradigm Shifting
I’ve heard first time the term edupreneurship by Danny Iny, founder of Mirasee (the successor of Firepole Marketing) and distinguished edupreneur in one of his books (I think it was the Teach and Grow Rich !!!) and later on in his webinars! Danny is an excellent trainer and master storyteller turned his knowledge and expertise to successful info-products.
The turn of the new century has found some established forms of working while speared out the establishment of some new business practices and models providing new solutions and approaches in the form of consulting or services.
Edupreneurship is one of those new forms, aiming at business practices related to the education!
To give birth to a new form of entrepreneurship within the new age is, basically, a part of designing and employing new business models you want to establish in the modern business ecosystem.
In the 21st century, the most desirable assets are the skills and the knowledge/digital components, while the most cherished commodity is … the time! Our society is in constant demand for more skills, knowledge, and competencies in the shortest time possible!
E-Learning is a solution (and a coherent approach) to the problem of lifelong learning, while the demand for more training and education is still rising along to the ever increasing working demands required by today’s employers!
Companies today are in an international environment of constant competition for survival, while they select high skilled and competence to perform a million tasks uncommon to earlier ages.
The transformation of the economy to a digital one brought roles and job descriptions as:
- growth manager
- social media manager
- content marketing expert
- lifelong learning manager
- startup expert
- edupreneur
- solopreneur
- …
The transformation of our economy from a purely physical and goods exchange economy to a digital or virtual interactive economy (“like” economy, friend economy, networking economy, click economy, sharing economy, favors exchange economy, interaction economy,etc.) provided the fuel for the release of massive energy, resources, and creativity to people looking the launch of new enterprises in a public have already tired of the old forms of doing business and making money.
The electronic transformation provided a base of reference for new forms of business and ventures to advanced, forms that were incomprehensible to older (pre-Internet) ages.
This shift in business operation in relation to the change in the traditional roles of consumer vs producer, prolong some stages of business incubation while providing a solid base for the advent of new business to root and flourish on traditional operations with new mediums!
Modern society is not separated to producers and consumers. They are both and as such, they have more requirements and demands on the items they use and employ!
A classic paradigm shift in business are the industries of publishing (a long-standing business tradition!) and the education (an, even more, older tradition counting and the verbal/oral teachings in many cultures).
Entrepreneurship in publishing section is based on the advance of the electronic books and the consumer’s trend of using various, mobile in essence, devices, for their consumption.
The advance of the e-books, the internationalization, the Amazon effect, the trend for reading everywhere (and with many devices) the reduction of cost per unit and the self-publishing facilitation develops a new framework of operations in the industry!
This framework constituted the basis for the start-up of new, publishing, activities on a global scale.
Accordingly, at the education section, a new transformation has occurred, based mainly on the pressure from the technology, the need for more skills and competencies after the formal education, the new business requirements, the need for lifelong learning procedures and integrated human resources development provided a new frame of reference for entrepreneurs.
The edupreneurship has been born!
Edupreneurship As A Business
Edupreneur is one of those things came in the collective conscious horizon with the advanced of IT technologies and communication heralding a new way to make a living by training activities.
In such a way, the edupreneur has taken a place beside the general consulting practices, coaching, facilitation, etc. providing means and resources to focus a person on realizing his/her potential.
How to do business with education? Well, universities do it for very long time, isn’t it! As a privateer, to become active in the field of education and hoping to provide more value is a gamble.
As a privateer, to become active in the field of education and hoping to provide more value is a gamble. To perform, though, an opening as that as a business person it needs something more than just knowledge and skills.
It needs an entrepreneurship spirit, a way of making a living in rough times, it means to package your knowledge in palatable knowledge chunks, learning dissemination capabilities, instructional design skills, and much more. It also needs solid marketing skills to wrap up, monitor and achieve your set goals.
The objective is, of course, to sell (it is business, after all), but it is not just that! More than that, edupreneurship is to develop a friend (clients?) base of friends, readers, interested parties, agencies, organizations, and people that you will commit to serve for a long time!
But it is much more things along the way; edupreneurship is related to business, processes, administration, technical skills, analysis & metrics, marketing, rapport building, community development and networking, communication and writing, e-Learning, training, education, ideas generation, content marketing, portfolio and brand building, income development, etc.
To become successful in this field you need to develop many skills along with your course but most of all you need to commit yourself to provide constant value to the community of people and organization you decide to serve.
Question: How do you sell your knowledge, skills, and expertise? How would you do it better? You can leave your comments or your questions, by clicking here.