RESEARCH YOUR OPTIONS
Deciding to start a graduate program is the easy part. Knowing exactly what you want that program to be is often a little trickier, and you may have a few different options that you’re considering. Or you may not really be sure what to do at all.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
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What skills or knowledge does your B-School faculty have that would be useful to others?
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What interests and motivates you?
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What can you and your team of faculty confidently create content about?
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Who do you identify with as an applicant, student, or graduate?
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What problem can you and the B-School faculty solve for others?
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What do people want to learn about that your B-School’s faculty can teach?
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Will people pay for access to the expertise in the B-School?
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How much expertise do you have, how much do you need to create a new graduate program or redesign an existing program?
Do you have a list of concepts now? Great!
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How big an audience is there for this type of graduate program?Search the MBA News Digest Archives for articles, Google for blogs, Youtube for videos and iTunes for podcasts about this type of program or topic. Are there any LinkedIn groups? If you can’t find anything it suggests there isn’t much widespread interest in this topic.
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How much competition exists?Are there already programs out there? How about courses, ebook, instructional videos and paid workshops or other events? An absence of competition is not always an indicator of opportunity.
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How likely are people to pay for this type of graduate program?Are people already paying for other similar products? Does your current graduate programs cater to this market in other ways? I.e. through course, concentrations, etc? What indicators do you have that this is a buying market? Are you creating a painkiller or vitamin?
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How easily can the faculty create content related to this concept?Do they already publish content about this topic? If not, why not? Will those reasons be an obstacle? If they are creating content, do they find it easy? Or do they struggle for ideas? Is there scope for going further, deeper with their content or is the topic limited?
Questions like these will help to give you a gut-check on the feasibility of your ideas and give you an initial read on which of them have the most potential.
Remember to try and keep your ideas as targeted as possible – think niche not broad. Instead of: “I’m going to create a graduate program that teaches people to be better leaders.”
Try: “I’m going to teach remote workers how to manage and lead in a remote work environment so they can help their coworkers be more productive.”
The more focused you are with your idea the easier it will be to attract your target audience – ideally you want to be filling a particular gap or solving a specific problem for them.
Research time!
So, now you have your top ideas it’s time to do a little research and see which of these options your audience finds most appealing.
This could include:
- Asking related questions on social media
- Seeing what questions people are already asking about the topic
- Surveying your existing audience
- Seeing what competitors are offering
Spend some time investigating your top 2-3 ideas, using the suggestions above as a starting point. Write down your findings for future use.
ACTION PLAN FOR THIS STAGE (3 ACTIONS)
- Use the ideas worksheet and questions above to help you brainstorm potential graduate program concepts
- Research your top 2-3 ideas to see which option has the most potential to move forward with