Podcasts about kognity

Was a pleasure to speak with Marvin Benno from Kognity on the topic "The Junior Engineer Problem" We discussed the lack of Junior opportunities which is a highly important issue for Engineering teams across the continent

In this episode, we speak with Helena Tivell, VP of People, Kognity, the all-in-one digital teaching and learning platform - with interactive content, analytics, and assessment support. We talked with Helana about the importance of continuously developing the leaders of your organization. In particular, we looked into some of the methods she uses to develop and upskill her leaders and why it matters: - What is the responsibility of a VP of People role? - How do you further develop and enhance leaders' ability to lead? - What tools and methods are used to support this process? - How do you decide on which areas to focus the upskilling in? - How do you ensure the learnings live past the training sessions? These are some of the many questions we address with Helena. Please tune in to learn what steps she's taken to continuously support the leadership team with an upskilling process.

Join host Jacob Byerley in a compelling Evo Nordics episode exploring "The Future of the Evolving Role of Product Managers in Tech." Engage in insightful conversations with distinguished guests: Josefine Johansson, Product Manager at Kognity; Alonso Quinones, Product Owner at Telenor; Quintus Kahapolarachchi, Group Product Manager at Telia; and Joakim von Stockenström, Head of Product at Adssets. Gain valuable insights into the ever-changing landscape of tech and the pivotal role of product managers in shaping the future. Tune in for expert perspectives from leaders driving innovation in their respective organizations.

The importance of, and how to, recruit the right talents.Hugo Wernhoff from Kognity in B2B SaaS CEOs.We discussed recruitment, education, the wrong type of VC-growth, scaling a SaaS company in the right way, and much more.-Timeline:1:20 - Who is Hugo Wernhoff?2:30 - Kognity's elevator pitch.4:30 - 5 quick ones.6:00 - Why he and his co-founder started Kognity.8:00 - His worst mistakes: Got caught up in the hype of the wrong type of VC-growth.13:30 - External question from Carolin Solskär at Nuverica: "What are the biggest challenges in creating inclusion in the education sector, so that everyone can get an equally good education regardless of need?"17:30 - GTM strategy deep dive23:30 - The best way to do outreach to Hugo.25:45 - Recruitment-Hugo Wernhoff's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wernhoff/Kognity's website: https://kognity.com/Josef Fallesen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseffallesen/-Do you want to get more booked meetings and close more deals? Try Vaam for free on vaam.io.-The music: Learning - Averro, AROM, Tore Phttps://open.spotify.com/track/5GOQtwi7xTnEoNqHrBOWem?si=4365c043e90e4444 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Danny Crook (Talent Acquisition Manager) from Kognity joins us to discuss life at an ed-tech company and what makes Kognity a unique workplace:(00:45) Intro to Danny, differences between the UK and Swedish workplace(06:50) Kognity's mission, products, history(11:30) What makes Kognity a great place to work?(23:35) What type of person would thrive in your environment?(28:00) What are the onboarding and Benefits? Where can we go for more info?Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Charlotte Roberts as she sits down with Marcus Erlandsson, CTO of Kognity in this episode of our podcast. Tune in as they discuss the latest advancements in educational technology and how Kognity is leading the way in providing innovative solutions for students and educators alike. With valuable insights and practical advice, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of education.

Host Abi Stokes leads a discussion with a panel of experts, including Carol Bigelow from Volvo Cars, Nina Fazeli from Kognity, Alex Tsarapatsanis from Voi Technology, and Baris Farnman from Truecaller. Together, they explore the essential ingredients that make a great team culture and share insights and experiences from their respective industries.

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by Kognity.The webinar recording can be accessed here.How do we prepare high school students who are graduating today for successful careers tomorrow? Listen to this edWeb podcast with Jeff McCoy, Associate Superintendent of Academics for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina, as he answers questions about how student agency provides high school students with the opportunities to take ownership in their learning journeys. Jeff provides examples that demonstrate how giving high school students more control will better prepare students for life and their careers after high school. This edWeb podcast is of interest to high school teachers, school and district leaders, education technology leaders, science curriculum directors, and science lead teachers.Kognity for NGSS All-in-one platform delivering flexible, interactive and equitable learning and teaching solutions

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by Kognity for NGSS.The webinar recording can be accessed here.Science educators today are looking for ways to implement and incorporate the Next Generation Science Standards into teaching and learning, navigating the changing landscape of technology, and exploring inquiry and relevant approaches to science education. It can be a lot to manage! Listen to this edWeb podcast with a panel of leading science experts who have a wealth of experience in a variety of fields ranging from addressing science standards to instructional design to international coaching as they discuss innovative ways to address these challenges in high school science education. They share opportunities and best practices for providing relevant, real-world science education and active learning experiences that educators, schools, and districts can implement to support student success. This edWeb podcast is of interest to high school teachers, school and district leaders, education technology leaders, curriculum directors, and science lead teachers.

Hugo Wernhoff is the CEO and Founder of Kognity, an EdTech from Sweden that allows teachers to make more efficient use of teaching time and empowers students to take ownership of their learning. Kognity raised over $27 million and is currently in the Series B stage. In this episode, we delve into Hugo's role as a CEO and Founder and how self-awareness allowed him to make his job sustainable, build culture and grow his company.Listen out for:3:23 Learnings from Scaling Kognity5:48 Struggles of Being a Founder7:28 How to Overcome Personal Challenges12:00 Dealing with Uncertainty15:00 Personal Development For Founders18:26 How To Become Self-Aware20:18 How To Make The Founder Job Sustainable24:40 How To Assess Your Company Culture27:13 How To Create Culture Consciously32:30 The Importance of DiversityLike the episode? Subscribe to Leaders of Growth, and don't miss out on the next one.

In this episode, we speak with  Hugo Wernhoff CEO & Co-Founder, Kognity, the learning platform that is powering teachers and students to better learning all over the world. We take the opportunity to talk to Hugo about Kognity being a Vision driven business, and specifically about his great vision for the students of today and tomorrow. He is on a mission to democratize and elevate education all over the world....the results so far are stunning!  What does it mean to be a vision and mission-driven SaaS company? What does it mean for a CEO and team to run on a 20-year visionary plan for the business! Hugo generously shares with us how the vision and mission stand above all, how that regulates the relationship with investors, affects recruiting & talent development, the way the customers and markets are approached, in a way that may differ from your regular SaaS growth journey. This is for all the SaaS leaders that are building for the long run - tune in and be inspired by someone that is truly making the world a better place while building a company for the ages.  

In this episode, Courtney Librizzi from the Kognity team joins to discuss the power of technology in pedagogy plus opportunities for becoming a part of a global community of educators. You'll also hear all about The Engage Conference by Kognity and its mission to improve learning and innovation in the classroom using EdTech. Show notes: https://classtechtips.com/2022/01/30/global-community-bonus/ Sponsored by Kognity: https://engage.kognity.com/  Connect with Kognity on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kognityed  Follow Monica on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/classtechtips/ 

SaaS-gurun och tech-profilen Hannah Meiton gästar #kommuniceraMera och delar med sig kring hennes resa till framgång. I över 15 år har Hannah jobbat i techbranschen, hon delar med sig av hennes viktigaste insikter och hur man driver ett framgångsrikt tillväxtbolag. Hannah sitter i styrelsen för Mentimeter, Kognity, All Ears och MedUniverse. Att vara ensam kvinna i en ledningsgrupp eller styrelse kan vara tufft, Hannah ger sin syn på saken. _____________________ Stort tack för att du lyssnar på podden. Kom i kontakt med mig (Sophie Hedestad). LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiehedestad/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/sophiehedestad/   

Mjukvarubolaget Matchi växte fram ut grundarens frustration kring att boka tennisbana. Nu genomförs 860 000 bokningar på plattformen varje månad. I veckans avsnitt tar vi även upp e-sportbolaget G-Loots uppskjutna börsplaner och tar en titt på edtech-bolaget Kognity som plockade in 165 miljoner kronor i veckan från riskkapitalbolaget Alfvén och Didrikson. Varför räcker inte vanliga fysiska läromedel för dagens ungdom? vi reder ut allt i veckans avsnitt av Digitalpodden. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In today's episode, Ross McGill, shares his powerful 5 minute lesson plan format that the UK Department of Education has listed as a best practice for teacher effectiveness and time savings. His tips will save you some valuable time. Teachers can spend hours typing up and writing a lesson plan that takes just 30 or 45 minutes to share! Ross McGill gives us a better way. See: The 5 Minute Lesson Plan to download resources and watch more about how to follow this technique. Sponsor: Join me at the upcoming insightful online conference, Engage 2021 sponsored by Kognity! I’ll be sharing my 50+ ways to use technology in the classroom updated with new tools and tips for the challenges of teaching in 2021. Many of your favorite speakers including  George Couros, Eric Sheninger, Monica Burns and David Geurin, and more will be sharing their expert tips with you. Engage 2021 is a must-attend online event for educators.  To register for this event, and to find out more about the speakers, go to engage.kognity.com/register. This is going to be a fantastic event where we can share experiences and explore new digital possibilities! I hope you’ll join me on February 4 for Engage 2021 sponsored by Kognity! Ross McGill - Bio as Submitted Ross works with pupils, teachers and school leaders across the world, supporting teaching and learning, workload and mental health. A former deputy headteacher, he has been teaching for 27 years working in some of the most challenging secondary schools in London. In 2015, he was nominated as one of the ‘500 Most Influential People in Britain’ by The Sunday Times as a result of being most influential in the field of education. He remains the only classroom teacher to feature to this day... https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/ross-morrison-mcgill/?ad=20190130learnaboutrossmpu Twitter: @TeacherToolkit

Hur kan man digitalisera utbildning på ett effektivt och lönsamt sätt? Och vilka nya affärsmöjligheter skapas när fler utbildas digitalt? Det ska vi bland annat diskutera i veckans avsnitt. Det svenska edtech-bolaget Kognity utvecklar smarta läroböcker – som kan användas på mobiler, läsplattor och datorer – med interaktivt material i kombination med videoklipp, animeringar och 3D-grafer. Bolaget har på mindre än fem år gott från 0 till 85 anställda och har som ambition att förändra lärandet i grunden. I veckans avsnitt får Günther besök av vd-n och medgrundaren Hugo Wernhoff. Hur gör man för att attrahera och behålla rätt personal när konkurrensen är stor? I podden får du flera tips på hur du ska gå tillväga. Hur sätter man sin egen gärning i en större kontext och hur kan det påverka din omgivning. Det och mycket mer diskuterar vi i veckans avsnitt. Lyssna nu!

Fredrika (Nihlén) Bennison is VP of Marketing at Kognity. Kognity is a EdTech company who is redefining the traditional textbook and elevating the learning experience for billion of students. Before joining Kognity earlier this year, Fredrika was Head of marketing at proof Analytics and CMO at Froda. We talked about becoming VP of marketing at a new company at the beginning of a global pandemic, about working in-house vs in agencies, about content and branding. We discussed not only the importance of sales and marketing alignment but how essential it is to align sales, marketing and product. "Technology is the heart of great marketing, content is the soul."

Bonusavsnitt!  Vi har samlat ihop våra gäster tankar kring digitalisering. Här bjuder de på sina bästa tips! Nedan hittar du vilka gäster som medverkar.  [00:20] - Erik Ekudden, Ericsson [00:45] - Günther Mårder, Företagarna [02:00] - Anna Nordlander, Amazonexpert [02:35] - Peyman Vahedi, rektor [03:40] - Emilia Liljeström, Martin & Servera [04:05] - Hugo Wernhoff, Kognity [04:25] - Kjell A. Nordström [05:35] - Jesper Åström, digital taktiker [06:45] - Robert Arvidsson, Liseberg [07:45] - Anna Bäck, Kivra [08:15] - Henric Smolak, Strossle [09:15] - Jenny Larsson, ABB

I avsnitt 56 av Digitala influencer-podden gästar Hugo Wernhoff, VD och medgrundare på Kognity - företaget som erbjuder interaktiva och digitala läroböcker. Vi kommer i dagens samtal prata om digitala läromedel, framtiden för utbildningsystemet och hur man kan möjliggöra ett mer effektivt utbildningsklimat för utvecklingsländer med hjälp av digitala lösningar. Trevlig lyssning!

Enligt vår poddgäst Karin Bjerde kommer en miljard elever kommer behöva utbildas fram till 2030. För att klara det skulle 67 miljoner lärare behöva utbildas. Samtidigt finns studier som visar på att många lärare kan tänka sig att sluta och byta bransch på grund av arbetsbelastningen. Lyssna när Karin Bjerde, affärsutvecklingschef på Kognity, gästar Futurions podcast. Karin Bjerde ger sin bild på alltifrån Kognitys utvecklingsresa och affärsidé till vilka utmaningar vi gemensamt behöver ta oss an för att verkligen ställa om lärandet att passa i den värld vi lever i idag. En värld som faktiskt förändrats radikalt sedan klassrum och böcker etablerades.

Marcus Erlandsson, CTO på Kognity är tionde gästen i SaaS-podden och avsnittet handlar om att bygga upp en utvecklingsavdelning från grunden och vad Marcus har lärt sig från att varit bolagets första utvecklare till att idag leda teknikavdelningen på 15 personer. Marcus delar bland annat med sig av sina bästa råd kring rekrytering av utvecklare, vilken kultur han strävar efter att etablera på Kognitys teknikavdelning samt hur ledarskapet bör se ut för att behålla duktiga medarbetare längre. Dessutom berättar Marcus om ett ramverk som han använder som chef för att utvärdera och diskutera prestation och utveckling med sina medarbetare. Slutligen delar Marcus med sig av sina viktigaste lärdomar, saker han önskar att han haft mer koll på tidigare, från resan med Kognity. Programledare: Johan Crona. Alla avsnitt av SaaS-podden hittar du på www.cloudcapital.se/saaspodden

This sponsored episode serves as the launch of a new partnership between MNIB and Kognity; an excellent online platform for teaching and learning that provides real-time resources for IB students and teachers.Kognity is an award-winning digital publisher that combines the power of technology and textbooks to create a vastly elevated learning experience.We speak with Karin Bjerde, the head of strategic growth for Kognity, who tells us about the many ways Kognity supports teachers and students in the IB Programme.Kognity already serves over 200K students and 16K teachers with intelligent online texts in more than 100 countries. Please join us in supporting Kognity as they help us to promote IB education through our podcast.Please find all our episodes by visiting the new IB Matters webpage. We have all the episodes arranged by topic and/or Programme.

Utbildningsmarknaden är värd 5000 miljarder dollar men har bara digitaliserats till 2%”Kognity vill ge alla världens barn möjlighet till en fantastisk utbildning och bidra vår allas framtid.Att göra gott och tjäna pengar går hand i hand. Ett måste för att långsiktigt kunna fortsätta att påverka världen positivt.Lyssna in på veckans avsnitt med den kompetenta, bedårande och entusiasmerande Karin Bjerde. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karin Bjerde som är head of strategic growth på Kognity är vår gäst i avsnitt 12. Kognity är ett EdTech-bolag som digitaliserar lärandet genom att ta fram digitala läromedel som är up-to-date och individanpassade vilket ger lärare och elever nya fantastiska möjligheter!Karin har bott i både i USA och Kina. Vi får höra roliga stories från denna tid men även hur den påverkat henne och gett en känsla av rotlöshet. För att skapa en mer stabil tillvaro så flyttade hon tillbaka till Sverige när det var dags att börja studera. Valet föll på Handelshögskolan och efter studierna flyttade hon till London för jobb på en investmentbank. Det blev några år på banken men hon kände att hon ville jobba med att göra en reell förändring i världen till det bättre och det ledde till att hon så småningom hamnade på Kognity. Lyssna för att höra mer om Karin och framtidens utbildning!Mer info:Hemsida: KLICKA HÄRInstagram: KLICKA HÄRLyssna på avsnittet: KLICKA HÄRSigna upp dig för vårt nyhetsbrev: KLICKA HÄR See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this special episode of IB Matters we talk to vendors at the 2019 IB Global conference in New Orleans. Each vendor briefly describes their products or services and gives you an idea of what expect when you visit their booth. Each vendor is also a good friend to IB educators and brings a set of experts to this conference willing and able to answer questions and help you better serve your students. Please visit these and other vendors at the conference - their participation sustains this gathering and your engagement will keep them coming back.0:00 Introduction 1:25 Kognity 4:15 Hodder Education 8:15 Toddle 11:15 IB ARMS 13:30 Sanford Harmony 17:15 ManageBac 20:30 Achieve 3000

In this special episode, we interview presenters at the 2019 Global Conference in New Orleans. We will also hear from vendors in Episode 20 (coming Thursday evening) who will preview the products they feature in their booths.We launched this episode with just three presenters but we are adding them every day - with nine sessions now included. We will update the audio with each new interview so come back (re-download the episode) to hear from new presenters. The table of contents below will give you a way to skip straight the segments you want to hear.In each segment the presenter will give the name of the session, the location and time of their session and a brief overview of what you can expect and what you might take-away from their presentation.0:00 Introduction1:25 Restorative Justice in the IB Framework with Angela Wilcox (7/19)6:05 Strengthening the Trans-disciplinarity of your POI with Chad Hyatt (7/19)13:00 Student Agency in Mathematics with Veronica Mathison (7/21)17:35 Songwriting as Action and as Reflection (PYP) with Dottie Price (7/21)23:35 Creating an IB Campus using the MYP Partnership Model with Chris Downs (7/19)29:10 Implementing an IB scoring system in the Design Curriculum with Jeremy Reichel (7/20)32:20 Kognity presentation preview (7/19 and 7/20)36:05 Toddle presentation preview (7/19)39:10 ManageBac presentation preview (719 and 7/20)More to come - check back for updates as we add more segments.#IBNOLA2019

Why does social innovation fair so poorly in contributing to education in modern Scandinavian welfare? “Kognity is worth a closer look for the lessons it gives in how to win the mandate to innovate education.” During the course of my years as an impact investor I have discovered a little-known market for grass roots innovation around the education system in Sweden, especially focusing on basic education up to secondary. Non- profits and entrepreneurs are doing work on improving school environment, extra-curricular activities and the content and tools of education itself. While its more rapidly developing private sector sibling, EdTech (educational technology) has made it into the limelight with billions of venture capital pouring into the sector, this grass roots innovation around basic schooling deserves a closer look. In my judgement, the sector is invisible because it is underdeveloped. It’s underdeveloped because it has serious issues moving product and business development toward product market fit in a reasonably speedy manner. Granted some great and powerful work is of course conducted at scale with social innovation developing education, with reproductive health, financial literacy and basic access etc. with millions of lives are being impacted in especially developing markets. But this is not the case with basic education in Scandinavia. Certainly the challenges to education in modern welfare are different. However, access, equality, resourcing and individualisation are still far from achieved. This is one reason why the latest episode of the Social Innovation Podcast is so interesting — because it offers some clues and keys this grass roots social innovation in education can leverage to grow and develop a more competitive offering work towards claiming a role in shaping the future of education In this second episode I, Henrik Storm Dyrssen, speak to Karin Bjerde, Head of Strategic Growth at Swedish EdTech start-up Kognity. She tells the story of growing a digital textbook and learning environment SaaS company into 90 countries, including developing (LDC) markets. The challenges of selling software to schools abound but Kognity has persevered in experimenting. It has learned the lessons of what does not work and come through to articulate a value proposition that works. One that makes them a partner to develop educations in the schools and markets they serve. That’s worth a closer look! The case for disrupting basic education? Kognity’s philosophy is that basic education is one of the most powerful levers to enable socioeconomic inclusion and advancement. That’s true in most corners of the world, Scandinavia included. “By 2030 we will have 1 billion more youth in secondary education, that requires 1 million new teachers, and that, in a time when 40% of UK secondary school science teachers want to leave the profession 5 years into the job.” — Karin Bjerde. Kognity identifies basic education as a challenge of scaling access. Similarly, it can be noted for example that the number of Swedish language teachers required to deliver language training to the population of migrants that have arrived over the past years amount to double the current cohort of qualified teachers. That means a challenge of magically producing around 30 000 Swedish teachers, yesterday. This is not likely to happen. The case for innovation is clear. We need to do more with what we have. We need to think differently to meet the sheer volume requirement of language training. It’s worth noting this is in a language training market where immigrants report learning very little in formal SFI (Swedish for immigrants) programs, more frequently citing lessons from online resources. In the absence of public and private educational sector innovation, life finds a way, for language training in Sweden, that’s currently YouTube. The case for technology, to meet the sheer scale of demand, is self-evident. The philosophy of Silicon Valley style tech innovation however, is “work fast and break things”. With education, as with other social sectors, there is a real risk of working fast and breaking people, or teachers for that matter. One of the most common apprehensions that Kognity meets in its daily sales work is the teacher asking, “are you here to take my job away?”. That makes a case for evolving rather than disrupting education in the pursuit of innovation. “The imperative is to use tech to evolve rather than disrupt education, work fast and break things does not apply” — Karin Bjerde How to sell to schools and their stakeholders? “Schools do not generally have coherent digital strategies, digitisation is piecemeal and unsynchronised. Most schools see digital as hardware instead of the intentional combination of hardware and software which is where the real potential for value lies. Giving a child a laptop doesn’t make education digital or better. Teachers have been burned by bad and unsynchronised technological plays, with 12 different logins and no idea of how to combine and implement the 12 different technologies. “ — Karin Bjerde How do you sell educational software to teachers and schools apprehensive about the role of technology potentially complicating and disrupting the status and practice of teaching? Karin’s message is that disruption does not fly as a value proposition. What’s more, basic schooling is part of a larger educational system, with stakeholders like school leaders, private-, public- and non-profit organizations that run schools and politicians that govern the mandates and resourcing of education, not seldom with local differentiation as a consequence. The key for Kognity has been to focus on making the challenge easier, focusing the sale on simple value propositions that are more easily brought home for all the stakeholders involved but especially bringing onboard teachers and making them ambassadors for the product. Teachers have a powerful role of influencers, as a collective, both locally as employees and nationally as organised in unions. Addressing their concerns and speaking to their needs made the breakthrough for Kognity. “Departing from the basic textbook allowed us to get into the classroom, and then we can work on developing from there.” — Karin Bjerde The first break through was focusing on a simple product, one that everyone around a school ecosystem can understand, the textbook. This meant articulating a value proposition of digitising textbooks, both reducing cost, enabling quicker and cheaper upgrades of educational material and speaking to teachers and principals and school organisation leadership in a language they were already speaking, managing budgets and organising delivery, acquisition and implementation of educational material. This made the technology both a tangible value as well as a less scary proposition. Kognity articulated its proposition as helping teachers to teach and students to learn in a more efficient way, by digitising textbooks. The secondary value proposition of individualising the learning experience and the teaching approach then comes on the back of the more basic value proposition of digital educational content. “Schools don’t generally have dedicated budgets for innovation, it’s easier to speak to priorities being made every day rather than asking school leaders to develop new ones.” — Karin Bjerde The lesson here for social innovation in education is speaking to established needs and budgets to get in and adding the more qualitative propositions on top of something simple and easy to buy and argue for. Innovators trying to improve school environments and extra-curricular propositions would do well to study this and explore how they can move the sale and primary value proposition closer to everyday core priorities for teachers and school leaders. Opportunities here include student health and teacher training and development, underserved needs with stretched budgets, clear cases for innovation. “Quite frankly, it’s not generally in the mandate of school leaders to drive educational innovation” — Karin Bjerde Innovating and developing technology together with educators rather than for schools and investors “Be the drivers of your own direction with a sustainable business model, it takes away some of the pressure from venture capitalists” — Karin Bjerde Building a tech-based product that requires up front investments runs the risk of bringing investors on board early that may or may not mix well with the longer-term intentions of the founders and the team. The team has to grow with the product and business but so do the investors. Shareholders come with a different set of priorities than founders and team members. In the best of cases these are well aligned both by way of direction, time horizons and implementation strategy. More often than not, relationships with investors don’t work out quite so aligned and smooth. By shipping and selling from an early stage Kognity bought itself some latitude, a better negotiation position and some clout by way of data and metrics that speak for themselves and can act to discipline and focus conversations with investors. Similarly, a classic challenge in the non-profit sector is becoming beholden to constant fundraising (40% of management time in non-profits is dedicated to fundraising) and putting the organisation at risk of adapting to funder-agendas to the point of mission drift from original strategy and inclusion of agency of the target groups served. Becoming economically sustainable from an early stage buys some serious latitude and wiggle room to articulate and retain the driver’s seat of strategy in the hands of founders and the team. “A big challenge is that the educational community still view technology as a threat, something that takes away your job or reduces the teacher to a desk worker, this is the consequence of years of poor technology implementation. The question people ask is ‘are you going to replace me?’ “ — Karin Bjerde Overcoming the first hurdle of making the sale and getting in the door opened up for the next series of challenges for Kognity. They discovered that technology had a bad reputation among educators and was mostly perceived as hardware for the sake of hardware rather than a value proposition of improving teaching and learning. When it comes to software, the situation is usually a myriad of programs with little synchronicity, leading to administration and technological trouble shooting taking time and frustrating teachers. To overcome this Kognity spent extra resources on high touch implementation to train and support teachers in adopting, using and making demands on the development of the technology. Here the tech adage of shipping early and iterating rapidly to adapt the product to customer feedback proved useful to develop the product to fit the demand. It also helped to build relationships with educators and empowering them to influence the tools they were using on an everyday basis. Further, the choice was made to adopt a dual strategy for product development. This meant a global technological platform and backbone complemented with local adaptation of educational content. This was made easier by focusing the first sales on a partnership with IB (International Baccalaureate) schools across the world, a private educational system leveraging the same educational content across the globe. This allowed the team to focus first on developing the technological backbone with little variation in content, in order to then continue to optimise the backbone and shifting resources to developing and adapting content for localised variation. “We spend a lot of resources on supporting customer implementation, making sure to get it right. Taking customer support from just reactive to proactive training and supporting the teachers to understand what value the functionality creates for them, say reduced time spent on marking papers — is essential to succeed with the implementation. “ — Karin Bjerde The ace up the sleeve for Kognity is of course the potential to generate enormous amounts of priceless data on real time every day teaching and learning, down to individual interactions between a teacher and a single student, up to a global ecosystem of teaching. This enables early stage product development, proposing and making changes based on real life data on how teachers and students use the technology. It also has the potential for longer term value creation in building a strategic treasure trove of information on how education is being conducted. This information could be commercialised as a product in its own right to help schools and educational authorities understand in what is happening in classrooms as well as across the entire education systems of individual countries. To scale or not to scale? “Scalability doesn’t look like Uber in education, which is and should be different from country to country, one size fits all would become one size fits none. We have a glocalized solution, a scalable backbone platform but tailored content to different client groups and markets” — Karin Bjerde This strategy clearly makes some sense, but it also poses some challenges. Scalability not the least, the core value proposition of EdTech is hampered by the degree of differentiation required to serve a universe of local variations in educational needs and practices. One can argue that Kognity is taking a risky bet that can land it in stretching itself too thin and over time diluting the quality of locally adapted content. The strategy hinges on maintaining a balance between high touch adaptation and implementation and the more universal propositions of a digital tool with automatic data-based individualisation of the learning and teaching experience, generating data for intelligence and optimisation. One might expect Kognity to continue to focus on market segments similar to IB where variation is limited across markets. Alternatively one can imagine them seeking to reduce the cost of variation by for example enabling bottom up production of local content, piggybacking on the established culture of teachers adapting and sharing teaching materials. It’s still to be seen how Kognity will fair in this challenge. This also opens up Kognity to competition for dominance on the content side. One can imagine national champions taking pole position in developing local content and curriculums, seeking to leverage more universal technological backbones like Kognity’s merely as an infrastructure for delivery. This could see Kognity retreating in the value chain to a pure SaaS (Software as a service) provider with a brand neutral “white label” platform delivering digital content produced by others. “Disruption is not a value proposition for educators, a sector with many stakeholders and interdependencies in the production of education means simply replacing parts of the value chain hard, rather evolving individual elements of the education process is easier to win support for.” — Karin Bjerde Managing for impact — on data and values “Our mission is to help teachers teach and students learn in a more efficient way. We don’t have double bottom line, but the values and vision are very present in the company. Our interpretation of impact measurement is that the product has to add value to sell, so if it is selling and we have recurring customers we must be creating value” — Karin Bjerde Kognity clearly has a mission to evolve and improve education. But how does it make sure it does just that? Kognity, relies on recurring sales as a proof of value creation. Does that help Kognity to manage for impact? Clearly perceived added value on the part of educators is important for an EdTech product, but lets’ unpack this. Kognity wants to make teaching and learning more efficient, that’s great. The assumption is that more efficient education will lead to better resource utilisation, namely, that teachers can focus on teaching and the few teachers we have and will be able to train over the coming years will reach further. Does that assumption hold? As a thought experiment, let’s say each school has 10 teachers. Let’s say that Kognity frees up the time of 2 teachers (20% increase in efficiency) by removing administration and supporting the classroom experience. What will happen to the 20% capacity created? If teachers are overworked, they may simply relax more. That may make their work environment more sustainable, reduce stress and sick leave as well as staff turnover. Teachers not so pressured may find time to add extra qualitative value to the teaching they already do, making it more fun, helping students more. The less stressed teacher may ask for more teaching hours, another class to teach, increasing the capacity of the school. Hypothetically Kognity could have both qualitative and quantitative positive impact both on teaching and learning. But how would they know? The next time a principal renews a Kognity license contract, how does Kognity know the basis of that decision to be impact, if so what impact or something else? Without creating data and metrics around what qualitative and quantitative gains that happen in Kognity schools and comparing those with non-Kognity schools, we won’t know. Control test group trials are expensive though. An easier option may be following the road of micro-finance, the pioneering industry of social enterprise, that went from trying to prove positive impact to focusing more on proving the absence of negative outcomes, i.e. proving the absence of negative trends rather than proving directly attributable positive results. This can be achieved against existing priorities of school leaders, like reducing turnover, educator stress levels, student stress levels, student pass rates etc. This means picking metrics that have a negative trend trajectory and seeking to achieve a stalling or turn of negative development into a positive one. That does not result in granular understanding of the nature of positive impact but rather a binary yes or no whether Kognity has a positive effect on the educational environment. Achieve the same negative trend turn in 30 different but comparable schools and you have a statistically significant (central limit theorem) positive effect. The risk here is that Kognity can be serving 100 000 schools and make great money without improving education at all. This is simply because sales can be generated from secondary values with unproven correlation with educational efficiency, like for example pupils enjoying work in a digital environment or teachers appreciating less manual administration. Kognity has a great resource in its hands to drive impact management, data, lots and lots of data. It can leverage this data from the daily usage of its platform to inform it’s understanding of what’s happening in schools. One can assume that Kognity already has a lot of this data but that its early days for interpretations and conclusions and that different data points and metrics probably point in all kinds of directions still. To clean this up, working through Kognity’s Theory of Change and setting up the cause-effect assumptions of impact can help to articulate the metrics needed to create impact proofs of concept. Inputs (resources) are used for Activities (production) that lead to Outputs (delivery) after which we can observe Outcomes (trend in target group results) that can be analysed for attributable Impact (what outcomes come from Kognity’s activities). The debate around impact measurement has evolved over the last 10 years from an academic and lay man obsession with articulating and proving impact to the investors and practitioners of impact seeking to inform the understanding the different elements of the impact value chain / theory of change and managing impact business with that information in complement to financial metrics. By managing Kognity on financial metrics like recurring sales, the organisation runs the risk of mission drift and decision-making that inadvertently prioritises business over impact. The litmus test for any impact organisation is having a governance and management process that allows it to answer the following question — “If you have 10 000 USD, and you can spend it on increasing sales, margins, product quality or customer experience, what information and principles do you have that makes that a logical decision rather than a matter of negotiated opinion or simply, a default decision in favour of short-term business?” This means having values articulated clearly enough to inform calls on what priorities the organisation will make in regular business and organisational decisions. It means having data and metrics that inform the status of production and delivery of both business and impact as well as the outcomes for target groups. Ideally, anyone in an organisation, simply given this information, can tell you what decision the organisation will make.

Social innovation is the practice of solving social problems with new methodology to achieve economically sustainable, scalable and measurable social impact for the target groups suffering social problems. The Social Innovation Podcast seeks to demystify and give you an insider’s perspective on social innovation as it is developing in Sweden and Scandinavia. Overarching questions What is happening to the Scandinavian social contract in response to social innovation? Where, how and by whom is the real impact being generated and scaled? What will be the roles for public, private and non-profit sectors as social innovation develops? Where are the opportunities developing, what sectors, social problems and actors are leading the charge? What are the best practices developing for entrepreneurs and innovators in innovating, realizing and scaling social innovations? I'm your host, Henrik Storm Dyrssen, and I've spent the last 5 years building the sector for social impact investment in Sweden. I built Leksell Social Ventures, the first social impact investment firm in the market and leading the work on the first "social impact bond"/"social outcomes contract" in Norrkoping Municipality. With us on this journey we have Lekell Social Ventures, the sponsors of this season, and Hugo Morse, Head of LSV since January 2019 to add colour and commentary to the dialogue in this podcast. Sectors and social problems in focus Education, digitization, individualization Mental health, identification, early intervention, digitization Socioeconomic integration of migrants, language, education, labour market entry Themes and questions discussed Social impact investment, investors, investment structures, trends, angels, venture capital, philanthropy, ESG commercial finance, grantmaking, public sector support Trends in cross sector collaboration, public private and non-profit Impact methodology, measurement, managing for impact and innovating on root causes. Social investments public sector early intervention in social problems and the need for collaboration and innovation. Example interviews Johan Oljeqvist - CEO Fryshuset non-profit Lars Stjernkvist, Chairman municipal council Norrköping, public social investments Kristian Ranta - CEO MERU health, mental health digitization Hampus Jacobsson - Angel investor, tech4good Andreas Konig - CEO Just Arrived, labour market integration Karin Bjerde - Head of Strategic Growth, Kognity, Edtech Lars Mac Kay - Head of sustainable bonds, Danske Bank Fredrik Björk - Researcher Malmö University Erik Fernholm - CEO 29k, democratizing and digitizing personal development Tove Larsson - CIO Norrsken Foundation, tech4good investing Martin Stiltberg - Sana Labs, AI and Machine Learning for language education Annica Johansson - Global Head of Impact, Reach for Change, impact measurement

Karin Bjerde joins me on the Learning on Fire podcast and explores the most important learning and educational moments that shaped her life. Our guest – Karin Bjerde   (https://www.educationonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/xg9apvyaeu1a1hn1ldjk.jpg)             Karin Bjerde is Head of Strategic Growth at Kognity, and a true global citizen having lived abroad most of her life. She has been named one of the world’s 75 future global leaders by Goldman Sachs and the Institute of International Education, and is now channeling this to challenge, rethink, and ultimately improve existing norms in education, firmly believing in the power of combining technology and pedagogy. Karin has a MSc in Economics, and worked at Morgan Stanley for 4 years before joining Kognity. Questions asked on the Learning on Fire Podcast Interview 1. Who are you? 2. What does your life look like now and how is it different from when you were growing up? 3. What was valuable about your school experience? 4. Which teachers do you remember and why? 5. Who did you admire when you were young? 6. What was it about that person that had such an impact? 7. What was the best piece of advice you have ever been given and who gave it to you? 8. What advice would you give your younger self? 9. What does your future look like? 10. What podcast, book, video, film, song or other resource has had the biggest impact on your life and why? Resources mentioned Tony Robbins (https://www.tonyrobbins.com) Tim Ferriss (https://tim.blog)   Contact information   (https://www.educationonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/b7wyh5nrdzuk7teyesw0.png)           www.kognity.com (http://www.kognity.com/)   Show Sponsor (https://www.educationonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/NAPE_2.2-1400.png)           (https://nape.org.uk/) Our aim is to achieve a higher priority for the education of children from birth to 13. High quality learning in the early years of life is vitally important to the creation of an educated society. Young children are not simply preparing for the future, they are living a never to be repeated time of life and the best way to learn is to live.  

Kognity vann årets startup i Serendipity Challenge. De vill göra upplevelsen av utbildning bättre. Vägen fram går genom att stärka lärarens roll i klassrummet.