In announcing several new tablets yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos dropped some wonderful quotes. One was, “Above all else, align with customers. Win when they win. Win only when they win.”
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Bezos went on to say, “We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices. If someone buys one of our devices and puts it in a desk drawer and never uses it, we don’t deserve to make any money.”
Amen. I think the lesson is exactly the same for open educational resources. If we’re really trying to help learners “win,” an OER provider hasn’t finished their job when they’ve published content. They’re succeeding when someone benefits from what they’ve done – and only then. We need to think harder about how to make this happen, and how to do it sustainably.
David on the Open Content Blog
I love this sentiment.
How can you set up your business so that the better it is for your customers the better it is for you.
Examples of people doing this:
- Amazon, mentioned above – sells their hardware at low profits, expecting to generate further money as the user benefits from getting more content. The more content they get, the more they use it.
- Dropbox lowers the price for you the more friends you send invites. You get more customers, they get cheaper prices and more convenience sharing with friends.
- Some restaraunts have a “pay what you think the meal was worth” policy, some software follows the same model. The better you perform, the higher your pay. Another variant is an “unlimited trial” on software, that gives you as long as you need to see if the software is “worth it” to you.
Examples of people who do it wrong:
- Phone companies use “cap plans” which give average users a cheap price, but the biggest users – who could be your biggest fans – get charged exorbitantly more, punished for using your product the most.
- Gym memberships – here you pay a large fee no matter how often you use it. This may be viewed as motivation – go lots to get your moneys worth – but the reality is that it can make for a business model which separates the interests of the gym from the interests of the patron. The gym may avoid encouraging patrons to come regularly, because it means they can have more people enrolled and still not reach capacity. To take it differently however, there is no extra cost (no punishment) for using the gym as much as you desire.
Further possible examples:
- A service such as Vimeo or Flickr, but if you achieve a certain level of popularity, they give you your account for free – for bringing so many new people to the site.
- On signup, your client sets a target (to lose 10kg, to post a blog everyday, to finish a course). You only get paid as they achieve milestones on their way to this target. You are now motivated to help them achieve.
Of course, one problem with that last strategy is that it provides a financial disincentive to not finish – the further you get the more you have to pay. In a way, this is then becoming similar again to the phone companies – you are charging people more for successfully engaging with you.
A different strategy again might be that of Fog Creek Software – your money back for any reason. You pay full price up front, so you’ve already overcome the difficulty of paying money for something. However, as a business you remain committed to making the whole experience worthwhile, or you risk them asking for their money back – and you’ve committed to give it to them, no questions asked.
It looks like a tricky balance, but one well worth pursuing.