It Takes a Village to Create a Successful Digital Courseware Product

It’s amazing when HRG gets to support our team members in their extracurricular activities! Last week Nathan Stempel spent four days in Idaho Falls working with the publisher of his Supply Chain Management textbook and digital courseware!
 
Here are the top takeaways he had from his trip: 
1. Growth enabled by remote connectivity - Idaho may not be the startup capital of the world, but Stukent has dug into Idaho Falls as it grows to be a significant player in the digital courseware publishing industry.  This location is great for its amazing pool of talented and energetic customer service-oriented team members and is enabled by access to an international set of talented authors, as well as leaning into remote roles to bring on key leadership positions.

2. Economic pillars build community - Just outside of Idaho Falls is the Idaho National Laboratory. This government managed research center is strategically located on 569,000 acres of Idaho plains (about half the area of Rhode Island), has an operating budget of $1.6B USD, and employs >5,700 folks.  With the population of Idaho Falls sitting at ~65,000, this is more than 10% of the workforce (considering the working age population).  This is great, and local leaders should look to diversify the economy to add more resilience to Idaho Falls by looking to support more companies like Stukent!

3. It takes a village - Having written most of his courseware remote, Nate got to meet over 25 people that are directly involved with bringing his courseware to life.  This includes, content editors, graphic designers, author relations, people in the marketing team, videographers, people in the sales team, and people building a Simternship (Supply Chain simulation software that replicates the experience of an internship).  No matter how simple or complex a product is, you can count on a large team working together to bring it to the end consumer (in this case, the student).

Check out the behind the scenes look at his video shoot covering an interview about the courseware.