Bill Fisher
费比然
CEO, EF China
英孚教育中国区CEO
数周前我与其他60万游客一起游览了上海世博会。不出所料，我到过的所有世博馆看起来都拥有一个共同的主题——对科技创新的推崇。日本馆里有个本田出品、能拉小提琴的机器人；中国馆通过主题电影展示了中国家庭生活的迅速变迁；沙特馆自豪地展现了他们的石油精炼厂，这些工厂 在当地的沙丘中甚为壮观；而瑞典人则为孩子们建设了一个游乐场，将创新描述为一种离不开游戏精神的活动。这对我来说有点儿牵强了——把宜家厨房、SKF球 状轴承和秋千联系在一起，用来象征创新，这已经超过了我能理解的范围——不过瑞典馆是孩子们尽情玩乐、家长们趁机休息的好地方。这些展馆都自豪地展示了现代人对科技创新的信仰。
此前一周我曾在泰国海滨主持过英孚教育（我的雇主，是中国一家领先的教育公司）的世界创新大会。我们边喝芒果汁边讨论， 讨论的主题是我们关于未来“数码学生体验”的产品计划，按照该计划，学生与我们之间以及学生之间总是能密切沟通，无论他们身处英孚语言学校还是公交车上。 这是个很有趣的挑战，解决了它就能使学生们更快捷、更容易地学习，还能加快世界发展的节奏。尽管对某些人来说这听起来有点傻气，但我们确实相信加快教育的节奏能够使世界变得更好。
为给我们的讨论提供指南，我们搜寻了成功解决我们面临的挑战的公司——这些公司通过创新主宰了各自的产业，值得我们效仿。这样的公司有很多，但我们只挑选了三家，我们认为这几家公司应当成为我们、竞争对手以及全世界的教育者通往更伟大的数码学习体验道路上的指明灯。
首家被选中的例子现在对我们所有人来说都颇为显而易见——苹果电脑。我上大学时，史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）曾打电话到我的寝室，跟我探讨他新创立的NeXT公司（这是真事儿，我会另写一篇文章详谈），从此乔布斯就成了我最崇拜的人士之一。不过我们选择苹果作为例子，并非是因为乔布斯魅力超群，也非因为他们的硬件设计美观，而是看重他们将设备、软件和媒体整合成优雅、无缝的从终端到终端的用户体验的方式。按市值排名，现已成为全球第一大科技公司的苹果是首家真正“另辟蹊径”的科技巨头，率先拥抱体验设计，而不仅是技术设计。如果教育公司能够在建筑物、 软件、书籍和教师之间创造同样无缝体验，全世界的学生们可能像喜欢iPod一样爱上学习。
我们的第二个例子是创造《魔兽世界》和《星际争霸》的暴雪公司，他们执著追求创造迷人的游戏体验。据传他们最新将推出第二大网络游戏《星际争霸2》，该游戏的设计工作历时10年。10年！他们最畅销的游戏《魔兽世界》拥有数千万用户，活跃玩家平均每周花费20个小时左右。 若比较每小时娱乐时间所耗费的金钱，这些游戏远比电影等其他娱乐形式划算。（想想《魔兽争霸》吧！）如果我们教育产业能使学习也变得如此令人上瘾，可以想象，学生们的学习速度将有巨大飞跃。
我们选中的最后一家创新表率是美国电子商务巨头亚马逊。他们应有尽有的产品种类或凭借Kindle电子书阅读器在电子书领域取得的成功并非我们选中该公司的原因，我们侧重的是其对客户服务的执著追求。我最近有幸听到亚马逊创始人及首席执行官杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）谈及公司战略，他宣布，他们的使命是成为“世界上顾客体验最好的公司”，从我个人的经验来看，他们做到了（亚马逊免费更换了我的 Kindle，甚至都没有询问它是为什么或者怎么坏的，他们就这样给我寄来了一部新Kindle，并礼貌地要求我把旧Kindle寄回去。哇）！教育机构能从中学到很多，以更好地服务学生。
因此，对任何希望创造神奇学习体验的公司或教育机构来说，苹果、暴雪和亚马逊是我们创新之路上的三大灯塔。不过要复制他们的成功绝非易事，不同的机构还需要各有侧重。是应该侧重于苹果式的优雅整合呢？还是暴雪式令人上瘾的互动体验？亦或是像亚马逊那样待顾客如上帝？我不会给出我们自己的结论，但如果教育界的领袖能真正致力于仿效这三家伟大的公司，全世界都将受益匪浅。
说到底，如果学生们都能快乐学习，我们所有人都能因此而获益。
文章转自：福布斯中国网
Inspired by Innovation
A few weeks ago I visited the Shanghai World Expo, alongside 600,000 other guests. Not surprisingly, all of the pavilions I visited seemed to have one thing in common -- admiration of technological innovation. The Japanese pavilion had a Honda robot playing the violin, China showed a movie about the rapid pace of change in the Chinese household, and the Saudis proudly displayed their oil refineries, tucked spectacularly between mountains of sand. And Sweden built a playground for children, characterizing innovation as an activity that requires play. This was a bit of a stretch for me -- connecting IKEA kitchens with SKF ball bearings with a swing set to symbolize innovation was more than my brain could comprehend -- but a nice place for kids to play and parents to rest. Our modern devotion to technological innovation was proudly on display.
The week before, I had hosted EF's worldwide innovation conference on a beach in Thailand. (EF, my employer, is a leading education company in China).
The center of our mango-drink-fueled discussions was our product plan for the "digital student experience" of the future, one where students are always connected to us and each other, whether in our EF language schools or on the bus. This is a very interesting challenge and solving it will mean students will learn faster and more easily. And this will accelerate the pace of development in the world. Silly as it may seem to some, we really believe speeding up the pace of education in the world makes it a better place.
To help guide our discussions we searched for examples of companies that have solved challenges like those we face -- companies to emulate that have dominated their industries thanks to their approach to innovation. There are many to choose from, but we picked three companies that we thought should provide us, our competition, and educators worldwide with a guiding light in the haze of ideas ahead of us on the road to greater digital learning experiences.
The first choice is rather obvious for all of us today – Apple Computer. Steve Jobs has been a favorite of mine since he called me in my dorm room at college to talk about his new startup NeXT (true story for a future article). But we chose Apple not for Jobs’ charisma or their beautifully designed hardware. We chose them because of the way they unify devices, software and media into one elegant, seamless end-to-end user experience. Now the biggest tech company in the world by market cap, Apple is really the first tech industry giant that has taken the "high road" and embraced experience design rather than just technology design. If educators can create the same seamless experience between architecture, software, books and teachers, the students of the world might see learning much as they today see their iPod.
Our second choice was Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft and StarCraft, for their obsessive devotion to creating engaging experiences. Rumor has it that Starcraft 2, their second biggest online game, recently launched after ten years of design work. Ten years! The average active user of their biggest seller, World of Warcraft, spends something like 20 hours per week playing and has tens of millions of people playing. When comparing dollars spent per hour of entertainment provided these games completely destroy other forms of entertainment like movies. (Talk about war craft!) If we in the education industry can make learning as addictive as this, imagine how fast our students will be learning.
The final company we chose look to for innovation inspiration was the American e-tailer amazon. In their case it is not their wide selection or even their e-book success with the Kindle reading device. It was instead their obsession with customer service. I recently saw Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO, speak about their strategy and he declared that their mission was to be the "best customer experience company in the world". And my experience shows that they deliver. (Amazon recently replaced my Kindle free of charge without asking why or how it broke, they just shipped me a new one and asked me kindly to ship mine back. Wow!). Educational institutions can gain a lot from this sort of ambition in serving their students.
So Apple, Blizzard and Amazon are our three beacons of innovation for any company or institution looking to create magical student experiences. But it’s no small task to copy such success, and different institutions will need to focus differently. Should one focus on elegant integration like Apple? Addictive interactive experiences like Blizzard? Or should we focus on treating customers like kings like Amazon? Well, I won’t give away our own conclusion, but the world will be smiling if leaders in the world of education really commit themselves to emulating these three great companies.
At the end of the day, we all benefit from lots of smiling students.
Original Article from: Forbeschina.com