• price of individual units of digital knowledge will decline dramatically in the face of competition (including excellent sources of free e-knowledge), diminishing costs of production;
• premium prices will be accepted by individuals for particular combinations of content, context, and tradecraft embedded in performances and experiences;
• new markets for an individual’s or enterprise’s e-knowledge will be opened by e-knowledge marketplaces;
• creation and use of knowledge will be combined in many settings (e.g. communities of practice) resulting in a sort of barter and free access for insiders; and
• new patterns of interactivity will enable dramatic reductions in the cost and price of cohort-based learning experiences.

One cannot precisely predict with elegant precision the combination and range of choices that will constitute the e-knowledge and e-learning marketplace of the future. One thing is clear: e-knowledge will enable a new range of choices that will put the learner and knowledge seeker in the driver’s seat.

What are the top three success stories you have come across of e-learning in action? 1) Jones International University, which is the first fully accredited entirely online university in the USA and possibly the world; 2) Duke University Fuqua School of Management for running the most expensive online MBA program with a tuition fee of US $85,000—proving that people will pay for quality online education; and 3) MasterTutor.com, a little known but genuine effort which has a few thousand middle-class Indian students paying a few thousand rupees as fees per course.

Madan Pant,
Interviewed by Madanmohan Rao

Disruptive Reinvention from New Competitors and Innovators. For some time, traditional learning models have been challenged by open universities, many of which enroll hundreds of thousands of physical and virtual learners. Today, lower-cost, cohort-based learning practices are being developed in emerging markets in Asia and in Central and South America by MasterTutor.com, NTT, NextEd, ITESM, Unisys, and others. These models are driving down the cost and price of e-learning and knowledge sharing. They will be refined in these settings and progressively applied to markets in developed nations. The processes, routines, and tradecraft used by these pioneering providers will be utilized by other providers.

When a new model changes the economics of an industry and is difficult to replicate, it can by itself create a strong competitive advantage.

Joan Magretta, 2002