Horizon Scanning & Rapid Prototyping with a Network of Champions

Horizon scanning prepares large organizations for nimble growth.

I lead the Future Technologies program at Pearson. We explore emerging technologies and trends that will, most likely, be applied to education. This post is an explanation of why this is important and how we implemented such a program. You can also watch a recorded version of the presentation I delivered at Uniminuto in Bogotá, Colombia, here.

Part 1: Resist & Stagnate or Accept & Grow

As we know, all industries are undergoing massive disruption in the new, digital economy. Let’s compare the three biggest automotive companies from Detroit in 1990 with Silicon Valley’s big three: With roughly the same amount of revenue, Facebook, Apple, and Google employ just a tenth as many people as did Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford — with thirty times the market cap.

This trend will not likely stop soon, and we can’t revert back to the old model of business. No matter what: progress is inevitable. What we must do is learn how to adapt, and to do that, we must adapt how we learn.

Kodak

This 130 year-old company went from $14 billion in revenue to bankruptcy in just 7 years. It is widely-known that Kodak refused to embrace the digital camera, holding fast to their business model of selling and developing film. When they finally introduced the Kodak EasyShare Camera in 2005, it was too late to compete with companies that had made significant headway into the new market. However, the story is not that simple.

As we know, people didn’t stop taking photos, but our relationship with photos has evolved. The company’s understanding did not evolve. There was a time when the purpose of photos was, primarily, about recording our memories — part of our “carousel of life,” as Don Draper put it in Mad Men. As technology enabled us to — anytime, anywhere — take a photo and then share it, instantly to everyone or anyone, photographs themselves became something different. And new companies, like Instagram, which were able to quickly evolve themselves, were adopted.

Taking and sharing of photographs has become ubiquitous; it is now a form of communication not unlike spoken or written word.

The Financial Times, GE, and Burberry

Like Kodak, the FT is approximately 130 years old. It also operates in an industry that has been highly disrupted by new technology. A print, daily newspaper, the Financial Times understood the need to adjust for the digital times. The Financial Times launched their web app in 2011 — a time when most businesses were building and supporting native apps — and submitted to Apple’s 30% revenue sharing model. Compared to a native app, a web app is less costly to maintain, easier for customers to discover, and offers experiences to readers almost indistinguishable from native apps. For more information on the difference, click here. The Financial Times thrives.

(I should mention that Pearson owned The FT Group until July, 2015, and the Future Technologies team worked with our colleagues at the Financial Times on prototypes before Pearson sold the FT Group to Nikkei. The Financial Times now has their own, internal. innovation group called FT Labs.)

This is not an isolated example. General Electric has become a leader in the Internet of Things to ensure that their appliances and devices remain connected. Burberry, while relying on what make them famous: the trench coat, has become a leader in using social media and mobile technology.

These three companies have something in common: whether you call it evolution or revolution, they made significant changes to their ways of doing business in line with larger societal trends. These are legacy companies alive and competing with the likes of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

Fear is a powerful emotion and can immobilize entire companies. However, the only constant is change, and an unwillingness to accept this and adjust appropriately will not halt the evolution of human behavior. It will only stunt organizations when nimble growth is needed most.

Part 2: Internal Positioning

Future Technologies

One way to inject new ideas into a company is through an innovation team like Future Technologies. In the five years since our inception, Future Technologies has gone through our own evolution. Here I will focus on how we operated for the majority of this time. We still work with the network of Champions I refer to, but our prototyping process has changed.

A global team, with members in San Francisco, New York, London, and Beijing, our team consisted of product managers, designers, and developers. Our remit was to explore emerging technologies only — not technology presently in use within Pearson. We understood the Gartner Hype Cycle — all technologies go through this process. By having an early understanding of a technology from the time of trigger, through the peak of inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment, we would be prepared to assist our Pearson colleagues in how to utilize these technologies productively during the slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity.

We came to realize that for early adopters and developers, it’s more of a Hype Pendulum, with technologies falling in and out of favor before being even basically understood by the most innovative communities. As an example, we went through several phases of exploration into mixed reality over the years, starting in 2011. When engaged in horizon scanning, it’s very important not to dismiss emergent technologies too quickly.

Champions

Our team was one of technologists. However, at Pearson, we have many, many colleagues who are leaders in their respective fields within education who also have an interest in using emerging technology. Our network of approximately 150 Champions work in all different lines of business within Pearson: Schools, higher ed, and professional development. They are product managers, directors, and salespeople. They work in any one of our scores of offices or remotely.

Maintaining strong relationships with our Champions required local Future Technologies team members to stay in constant touch with them, monthly update calls to distribute information and get new ideas, hosting global meetups so that Champions themselves could meet in person, and fostering an ongoing online community through our internal network. The four-tiered system, including physical and virtual interaction, enabled us to maximize interaction and scale.

Meetups were especially crucial because Champions who didn’t ordinarily work together were given the opportunity to collaborate on solving entirely new problems, introducing them to new ways of thinking, and sending them back with fresh ideas. We also used these meetups to gather pitches for new prototypes.

This Champions network is crucial in getting the word out about what we were working on as well as to deliver information to us about what was happening in wider Pearson.

Part 3: Rapid Prototyping

The Process

For about four years, working with our Champions, we followed the same prototyping process: four projects per product manager per year. Twice a year, our team came up with prototypes, and twice a year, our Champions did. From start to finish, we worked on each prototype for only three months. Upon completion, we shared all of our findings with our colleagues at Pearson and encouraged them to create products for further development.

We had four criteria for a prototype:

1. Future facing: a digital exploration into technology not being used at Pearson
2. A challenge: our team was not a development shop, so our goal was to build a functioning proof of concept using technology we knew little about before project commencement
3. Potential for sponsorship: upon completion of our project, we would want to have at least one internal team that could continue with our work
4. Add value to Pearson: rather than just a gimmick or distraction, our project would have the potential of contributing worth as a new product of feature of an existing product

In those first four years, we explored MOOCs, interior beacons for classrooms, APIs, responsive web design, Google TV integration, web GL, big data, teaching coding through a web application, voice control on Android, brain-computer interfaces through EEG, robotics, adaptive search algorithms, and much more. No two prototyping cycles were ever the same.

Example: Project Yarbus, An Exploration into Eye Tracking

A couple of years ago, several companies were making tremendous progress in eye tracking technology. Some of these devices were being made available to consumers for less than $100. About one in ten people have dyslexia, and this is often undiagnosed. Our idea was to take an affordable eye tracker, create an application, and make it available to teachers. Teachers would then be able to inexpensively test students to detect voluntary saccades. An abnormality would be an indication of a problem in the frontal lobe, potentially dyslexia. Students would then be reviewed with more efficient applications.

Crucial to success was the precision of these devices. Unfortunately, I discovered that these devices were not nearly powerful enough. We would have to spend $35,000USD and each device would requires its own PC with pre-installed software. The idea, as we initially perceived it, was scratched.

However at about the same time, we became aware of a speed-reading startup called Spritz.

In the late 19th century, we learned that when reading, we focus on one word at a time: fixations, rather than in sweeping glances, as we previously thought. 80% of the time that we are reading is spent on moving our eyes (saccades), and only 20% on comprehension. There is an Optimal Recognition Position for each word, which Spritz places at the center of the screen, one at a time. Spritz removes the need for any eye movement. Spritz was undergoing research on the effectiveness of making it easier for dyslexic readers.

Our team began work on a prototype. Rapid Reading is the United Kingdom’s most comprehensive reading intervention program. We used content from Sky Boy, a book in this series. The portrait layout, background coloring, and placement of the image were all important details for dyslexic readers, so we maintained them for the iOS prototype application. Also, the prototype used this custom font, designed specifically for readers with dyslexia: the Heinemann Special. The Heinemann Special offers modified characters and kerning pairs ideal for dyslexic or special needs use (such as a, d, b).

The prototype did not become a product supported by Pearson. However, over the course of the next year, several groups came to our team, curious about Spritz, speed-reading, or the current state of eye tracking technology. In that capacity, we acted as internal consultants.

Other Explorations

We had also created a use case with Google Glass. Our idea was an instructor in automotive repair instruction would use Google Hangouts with her students. We visited a school and did a test run with a teacher and her students in the repair shop — beyond theory, we tested out the device with learners, instructors, and in the real-world setting. I myself wore them every day for over a month to immerse myself in the experience. Only through these experiences were we able to inform our colleagues on the benefits and drawbacks of working with Glass.

Another prototype explored the Mozilla Open Badges platform. Our Champions from Pearson VUE, our testing arm, were our sponsors. We built a prototype for online credentialing, and that prototype did become a product of Pearson’s. You can sign up at youracclaim.com

These are just a few examples. Our findings inform developers, designers, and product teams across a wide range of technologies.

Always Learning: Future Technologies Today

Future Technologies has gone through our own evolution. We recently halted prototyping to take some time to review our work. We have contributed our findings to work in immersive learning experiences, which will be increasingly important for lifelong learning. Future Technologies is now part of Pearson’s Advanced Computing & Data Science Lab, run by John Behrens, which improves the software capabilities, processes, and frameworks of Pearson’s digital products by applying intelligent computing. Independently and in combination, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and biosyncing enable new ways of learning. Pearson will remain prepared for nimble growth through horizon scanning.