The Future Unicorns of edtech, piece 3: HBS Case studies meet Football Manager

There is a lot of enthusiasm for the future of education and work, but we need more bold, crazy and exciting ideas that challenge the status quo and inspire the future. At Emerge, we see the world as founders do and keep seeing opportunities for companies that don’t exist and we think really have to be built.

This new series, ‘The Future Unicorns of Edtech’, is full of short, sharp and unpolished future of learning and work ideas that have come from the thousands of conversations we have each year with our community. As a first check VC we believe in being there from the start, and would love to see the best of these ideas getting built.

Would we invest in all of them? Maybe. Have we done a lot of research on them? Sometimes. Is anyone already doing or thinking about this? The world is a big place, so most likely yes, in which case we would love to talk to you!

THE TL;DR IDEA

HBS-style business case studies meet Football Manager-type games

Management focused, gamified, multi-player online case study simulations that guide individuals through real-world business problems based on journeys of leading executives, challenge them to react to information and make their own leadership decisions and give feedback to help build business acumen and skills.

THE PROBLEM

Covid has changed how we consume education to a certain extent. But while we have gone more digital, we are still far from a radical revolution. The emerging digital corporate learning market is still too often filled with low-impact MOOCs and LMSs based on asynchronous off-the-shelf videos.

There is a wealth of great content out there, but online content consumption is still boring. For edtech end user consumption (not just business purchasing) to really kick off and move to the next radical phase, we need solutions that help great content stand out and keep the audience engaged through active consumption and strong learning impact.

But what about human to human learning? It’s not scalable, it’s linear and doesn’t allow for personalisation. Even the world’s best business schools fall very short of delivering excellence given face-to-face format limitations. Taking a negotiation course at a top business school will still, at best, consist of discussions of case studies, where the average student gets less than one minute of discussion time per class, and occasional peer-to-peer mock negotiations where students pretend to be incentivised to argue about made-up business scenarios. This is neither scalable, engaging or impactful.

THE IDEA

There are two very good and different types of education — Harvard Business School (HBS) case studies and games like Football Manager — that, if merged, could create exciting middle manager training and even a higher education business course proposition. Before explaining further, let’s look at what we like about HBS case studies and Football Manager.

What’s good about HBS case studies?

HBS case studies are well researched, talk about real world problems, are directly informed by successful entrepreneurs and executives and provide great questions and starting points for fruitful discussions. They are also a cash cow for Harvard. They are part of Harvard Business Publishing which made a healthy $262m in revenue in 2019 as a content business, with just under 15 million case studies sold the year before.

What’s wrong with HBS case studies (as an education tool)?

There is a wealth of great information packed into each case study and insights waiting to come out of them. But unless you are at a business school, have a great professor facilitating the transfer of insights and an incredibly productive use of the limited time you spend on each case study, much of the potential learning goes to waste. Twenty five years on from their launch, HBS case studies haven’t evolved with technology and do not currently live up to their potential.

What is good about games like Football Manager?

Football Manager is a well-established game title in which players live in a simulation where they operate as managers of a football club. They buy and trade players, manage the P&L of the business and follow the results of their decisions. Everyone thinks they would be a great manager and coach when they watch a game, but Football Manager really shows you what it is like and tests your skills. You learn so much more through playing the game and actively monitoring situations and making decisions than you ever could by reading about the industry.

What’s wrong with games like Football Manager (as an education tool)?

Football Manager is great as a game. However, while you learn a decent amount about being a manager and build some valuable skills, that’s not really the core purpose of the game. There is no way to tie in the scenarios you face and decisions you make against generalisable theories. The game is not explicit about the skills you are learning and developing, while they feedback loops are indirect and unclear.

What does the hybrid of HBS case studies and Football Manager look like?

Imagine each week instead of reading a case study, you are given a realistic simulation of a real business situation and problem. You have to analyse the information and make decisions. Each decision brings its own consequences and takes you down different routes. These could be coupled with short pre-recorded videos from the executive the case study is based on, telling you what they think about that decision. If it’s an obvious mistake they can tell you why — perhaps they made that mistake and learned their lesson the hard way. If it’s a great decision perhaps you get a short lesson from a famous business academic explaining how this decision is grounded in academic theories and research.

As you progress with each case study you learn more about yourself and your management style. You have a way of tracking what competencies you are covering, the theories you are learning, the skills you are acquiring and how you are progressing against all of these. Imagine instead of reading ‘Elon Musk’s Big Bets’ HBS case study, you get a chance to relieve it through a case simulation. Every now and then, based on the decision you make, you get a pre-recorded message from Elon Musk or HBS faculty, telling you what they think about it. At intermediate points you get to see how Tesla would be doing had you been in charge as CEO.

Another exciting dimension here lies in making this a multiplayer simulation experience. Your peers or colleagues could also be going through the same simulations and making their own sets of decisions that lead to their own unique outcomes you can compare your performance against. Some simulations could be zero sum games where you compete, negotiate with others and make decisions that affect your virtual company prospects. In others you could be working together with your peers, taking on different executive roles in the business and working together to maximise the outcomes of the business. Good team work could lead to better outcomes, while disjointed decisions could lead to failure.

WHY IS THIS EXCITING?

Engagement: great strategy games have excellent engagement and retention mechanisms that could be applied very effectively to learning in the business world.

Learning impact: it is hard to achieve effective learning outcomes through reading and watching videos. Recreating the journeys of seasoned business leaders and academics through simulations and embedding their advice could be really powerful ways to 10x their impact through active learning and better learning outcomes.

Cost-effectiveness and scalability: going to a high-ranking business school in person or online and getting taught by top executives is something only the very wealthy can afford. A solution like this is pure SaaS, is much scalable with a far bigger target addressable market than business school case studies.

First mover advantage: Masterclass has captured the edutainment space with premium celebrities and Eruditis has cornered the market with premium online executive MBAs. Here, first movers that are able to attract top executives and academics could build strong early brand defensibility.

WHY THIS MIGHT (OR MIGHT NOT) FAIL

Games take a lot of time and money to develop and most learning games fail. We are not talking about a solution that is going to match the quality of a game like Football Manager. But while it can’t be a simplistic multiple choice answer learning journey, it also doesn’t have to be a hyperrealistic high-budget simulation. There is a golden middle where users find it engaging and powerful enough to keep coming back. Some edtech companies pour money into making sure the video quality of their courses is impeccable. We think more money should be invested in creating fundamentally new formats of teaching and curriculum design, with simulations being a very strong candidate.

There are many companies already attempting VR soft-skill corporate training. VR games are amazing and some simpler VR trainings are good. However, a lot of VR training is behind on the technology and cost curve. It is easy to imagine VR as a cost effective and realistic place for employees to practice public speaking. However, it is difficult to see it as a necessary and realistic environment for employees to learn how to be better decision-makers and leaders.

Hasn’t HBS already cornered this market and what incentives do other universities have? Publishing businesses are not tech companies and it is more likely they will want to partner with a business like this than risk wasting money while competing against it. Similarly, there are many universities other than Harvard with strong publishing units that could lend a strong brand to this idea, with its offer of a new revenue stream and increased brand reach and appeal. Lastly, while more difficult, this could also be an opportunity without partnerships. The market of impressive business executives willing to share their stories and knowledge is much greater than HBS’s collection to date.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Do you agree with this opportunity? Do you think there are other opportunities and risks we haven’t thought about? Do you know someone passionate about this or building a company in this space? Would love to hear from you.

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