The urban mobility area is seeing and is expected to continue to see a significant transformation. EIT Urban Mobility’s mission is to facilitate and accelerate this transition towards more sustainable models and a better use of public space. This demands a significant shift in competences and how the area is addressed.
The Competence Hub, our professional lifelong learning school, offers a wide variety of courses to professional. The ambition regarding volumes and revenues is high and the Competence Hub should become financially sustainable within a few years. This demands a working business model as well as a product market fit, being able to meet markets needs and becoming profitable. In addition the Competence Hub offers should mainly meet needs that are not met on the market today.
A critical issue to solve is how to leverage on the assets of existing and new partners, building a financially sustainable operation. There is a need to decrease development, running and marketing costs, as well as increase the profit potential.
Do you agree with the statements above? Is this a significant need that requires our attention? What is the area/s the Competence Hub should focus on to live up to the ambitions stated?
We should here focus on trying to understand the nature of the problem, so please try to avoid discussing concrete solutions, even if it is difficult. Potential solutions will be discussed in the next step of the process.
EIT Urban Mobility Academy Calls 
– What are our partners or target companies ready to pay for and how much? This is a first question I would try to answer. But the answer most probably will be quite theoretical.
– Maybe we also have to think about the process : a small service sold to one company, can also lead to a big service being sold to this same company. In this case it is rather an organic approach.
– Sometimes the product is fit, but not the sales team!
– A fit product is maybe a product that customers commit to buy even before it is produced? this would significantly reduce the risk.
LikeLike
EIT HQ has a lot of expectations on LLL programmes as a source of revenues. Of course it can not be expected as much as of those coming from innovation programs
LLL programs should be really relevant to industry to make a company pays for it.
Individuals who want to change sector could pay for LLL programs but not too much if they are unemployed
Individuals who foreseen a potential better future in Mobility sector might go for a part-time master programme.
What are the topics those programs should cover? for architects-urbanist? for what king of engineers? For sociologist? For who? And what? And how? Online? Creating communities???
LikeLike
What to offer, and how to find out if there is a market may rather be a responsibility for the Competence Hub. But the risk to find out what may work and developing markets can be shared. In this respect the main call could still be an option to explore. This could be in the form of us “investing” in course development, with the potential to gain significant return (revenue share) if the marketed courses (or course portfolio) are successful and can be repeated the coming years. This could be one way to share risk and return when searching for a good product market fit. The potential project do then however need to have a significant market potential to be considered. Alternatively they fill distinct gaps on the market, but then this should rather be handled outside the call and directly by the Competence Hub.
LikeLike