How many smartphones can a single, individual, actually make use of – two? three? How much education can a human being consume? Well, there is a reason learning sometimes is called a drug. The more some people get, the more they tend to ask for. One more course, please. So, how to identify the losers on this market?
In industries where the market has limited potential size, there can be winners and losers. In this type of market when somebody gains position, others, by definition, have to lose position. Hence; winners and losers.
But not all markets are actually like that.
The educational market has for instance no upper limits. It is already tremendously big. Still it can, probably also will, become bigger than that.
Theoretically speaking; such markets give actually room for winners, and more winners.
What type of industry is the education industry, really?
Actually; not that easy to tell. Particularly not now when it is becoming global.
Throughout history we have already seen new technologies entering the educational industry, the postal system, once; the radio, once; the TV, once; the PC, once; but without any real technological losers being identified.
One could say that the market for education has constantly grown, making room for new entrants without hurting the established ones in any serious way.
What now seems to be happening to the world of education as it has started to become digital is that large parts of it have also begun to become global.
Easy to forget, but the education market has really had an incredibly long period of being nationally, sometimes even regionally, protected. Hundreds of years actually.
It is actually really difficult to figure out how an industry that never have been global before will function, ones it becomes global. The only thing we for sure can know about such cases is that it has to be tested on the market, before we finally can know.
When industries become global two things tend to happen at the same time: A tremendous potential growth of the market size, at the same time as a tremendous growth in terms of possible competition.
Sell off, focus, but also expand: Often a smart strategy during such times.
So why, really, have we seen some universities, some private educational companies, close down during the last years?
It is simply because; some existing established educational actors don´t seem to have been able to develop themselves over the years.
Why haven´t they?
Disruptive Education 