While physical training is not our main business, we still see it as a great channel to connect with growth and innovation professionals across the globe. It is also a non-negligible part of our revenue streams. A few weeks ago, that business model got disrupted. Covid-19 brought every conference, meetup, gathering, and training on the planet to an end. Including ours.
Ironically, this is a moment in time when business model transformation skills are more essential than ever before.
Like many other companies across the globe we asked ourselves: could we pivot our workshop business to a distributed context in order to respect social distancing and confinement measures? Launching a new idea like this would require some testing, despite the urgency.
To de-risk any new business idea you need to test four types of risks:
- Desirability: do they want it?
- Feasibility: can we build it?
- Viability: is it financially viable?
- Adaptability: is it the right time?
We already knew we could deliver the content via a series of virtual workshops. We’ve quietly been delivering remote programs to global organizations for years. Hence, there was little feasibility risk.
Our two main risks were desirability and viability: Would our self-service customers be interested in such a virtual masterclass and how much would they pay for it? In the video below Strategyzer co-founder Alex explains how we de-risked the desirability and viability of our Virtual Masterclass without building anything and only in a few days.
In normal times we’d probably test a lot more. Given the time pressure we deemed this one experiment sufficient for our purpose. We’re proud to announce the launch of our new Virtual Masterclass! The evidence we collected showed that the number of people interested in the Masterclass was clearly above the success threshold we had defined. The small experiment also validated a price point that makes it financially viable for us to start building a virtual event.
So please join me in welcoming the Virtual Masterclass to our product portfolio. We’re working hard to make the virtual experience rival our physical one in terms of energy, interactivity, and learning experience.
