Digital Education Platforms Tailored to Teachers

Entrepreneur and Managing Partner at Strategos Group, Adam Giery, sits down with Scott Kinney, CEO of?Discovery Education , on his?Capital Class podcast ?to examine the world of digital content platforms with a cornerstone in the sector. Giery explores the evolution of Kinney's journey from the early days of technology to Discovery TV and Shark Week notoriety and all the way to today's independent model and massive growth.

Kinney's path took shape when the Internet was first emerging inside education. From that position, Kinney and Discovery Education have evolved alongside the changing landscape creating full-fledged streaming technologies and models supported by a committed community of educators.

"I've remained passionate about professional development and the role of educational technology in the process. I've always felt that the way to scale what we know about good practice and education was through the strategic use of technology," says Kinney.

Below are some key takeaways from Giery and Kinney's engaging interview highlighting how Kinney's constantly evolving educator-focused mindset led Discovery Education to become one of today's leading digital platform resources. To hear even more, listen to the interview in full on the Capital Class Podcast.?

Early Days

Adam Giery:?You had an early beginning that paralleled the advent of the Internet entering the education community in the early ’90s, correct?

Scott Kinney: Yes, I fell in love with technology and saw it as a strategic use inside education. I started working at local school systems part-time while in college with satellite teleconferencing and early technologies in education. I fell in love with what it could do for kids, the access it gave teachers to engage students, and how to deploy what they know about good instructional practice. I've been doing it for over 30 years now.

I remember my first hiring as a technology coordinator, working for the assistant superintendent in a district. On my first day, we had lunch, and he gave me a tour and showed me my office setting, saying, "Do whatever it is you do here." A large stack of papers was on the desk, with a 56K grant to the Internet buried inside. It's remained a lasting memory of where we've come to today.

In the early '90s, I had the great fortune of bringing the Internet into schools. I was working with teachers on using email and accessing websites and online databases. Fast forward to today, and we deliver about a million learning objects daily through the Internet. It's interesting to see the arc of work in education from that initial pipe into the schools to the incredible growth over the wire today.

Start of Discovery

Adam Giery:?Your business has humble beginnings. It started with videos and now is a repository of millions and millions of high-quality digital content teachers use daily across the globe. Could you share a condensed version of the start of the journey?

Scott Kinney:?Yes. We started as a video-on-demand service. I worked at IU #21 in Pennsylvania in a regional services center between the state and districts providing consortium services. One of the services that we offered was a media lending library. We had 6000 videotapes and DVDs and two van drivers with little tubbies. If a teacher wanted a video, they would fill out a form, send it in interoffice mail, and a van would deliver it two days later. As we got more sophisticated, it became an email submission.

United Streaming brought it a step further by taking videos, digitizing them, aligning with the state standards, and delivering them over the Internet. Discovery Education did this with educational videos a decade before Netflix's popularity. It was a great beginning.

When I think about the evolution of United Streaming and United Learning, aligning to standards 20 years ago was novel back then.

Adam Giery:?Thinking about where the Internet is now and the rapid conversation you hear about virtual reality (VR), is it something you think about? Or is it too nascent from your perspective? What's your forecast on where we're heading?

Scott Kinney:?We always think about utilizing emerging technologies in a way that can support teaching and learning. When we created the video-on-demand service and United Streaming 25 years ago, it was cutting edge and disruptive to the landscape. The technological infrastructure needed more time to be ready for it. Teachers weren't quite prepared for it, but we brought folks along. Almost 15 years ago, we delivered the first digital textbook that went in through adoption in Florida. We're always thinking about new technology.

We have a sandbox AR/VR app on the App Store that's free for educators. We're not sure what the role of AR/VR in education will be, but we want to continue to look at it and put it in the hands of great teachers, who will tell us a little about how to deploy it in the future.

OpenAI is fascinating to me. How do we think about developing content in a world where you have things like OpenAI and ChatGPT? How do we leverage that for good? How do we leverage that correctly in a changing world? We're constantly trying to innovate and think about how we look at the landscape and leverage these technologies.

How do we think about implementation at scale and ensuring that our services are as easy-to-use as possible for classroom teachers? We don't want to burden them unnecessarily in their incredible jobs.

Innovative Spirit

Adam Giery:?One of the challenges I see for a larger company your size is that you have to deliver in uniform. There has been immediate whiplash on OpenAI with plagiarism, but there will be answers. These emerging technologies won't upend the teacher in the classroom, but is there a place for them to supplement? How do you approach innovation of newer technologies?

Scott Kinney:?We have an innovative spirit here. We love to innovate. And we love to think about how new and emerging technologies support what we know about good teaching and learning.

Our head of product is famous for using the phrase "crap pots." We throw crap pots in and innovate in different areas. We don't always have a go-to-market solution. We may not have an end-to-end strategy around it. But, like AR/VR, developers in unity sit in Manchester, UK, and innovate. We put out sandbox AR and an app that we made available to teachers for free. We'll continue to learn from that and talk to the teachers using it. We'll ask them how they use it in classrooms and if there's an application for it that we need to see.

When we think about innovation in emerging areas, sometimes we're just looking. We're experimenting. That's important because it's how you develop solutions. For example, we could explore if Open AI can generate content related to XYZ more effectively. If that's true, then we want to go down that path. We want to play around a little bit.

Intentional Evaluation

Adam Giery:?You've been careful and intentional about acquiring pieces that continue to expand the stack. How do you evaluate those opportunities? How do you go about the acquisitional process??

Scott Kinney:?We consider the features or functions supporting our current services. Our AR/VR development shop in Manchester, UK, was an acquisition. Also, we purchased an interactive quiz function to tie to any digital asset within our platform so people can stay within and build formative assessments around digital assets that we launched.

When most people think of acquisitions, they think of new services or products. But candidly, the first thing we think about is a product we wish to build ourselves. If it passes that, then we'll get to the other stuff.

Mystery Science?was one example. It wasn't around synergies but rather a feeling of envy for the product. With?Mystery Science, I started reading what teachers were saying about it. I fell in love at the first meeting. Teachers love it, and people love the content and Mystery Dog. Also, incidentally, it's a great business. But that wasn't the first thing that I noticed. I first saw the teachers' affinity for the service.

Then we look at things like the people and the culture within the company is a good fit. Next, we look at what's the purpose. What's their mission, and ultimately are they making a difference? Is it something we are proud to put in front of the partners we work with worldwide and stand behind? Finally, if all those things become true, we work out the economics and see if it makes sense for us as a business.

Cultural Partnership

Adam Giery:?How do you integrate from a cultural aspect inside acquisitions?

Scott Kinney:?We don't go in thinking if they're going to match us and marry us. We want to determine what they bring to the table better than us. How do we learn? That acknowledgment is super helpful, puts people at ease, turns the table, and puts a little pressure back on us to ensure we're constantly improving.

Adam Giery:?We use the term "Laboratory Culture" of experimentation at Strategos about experimenting and embracing lessons learned. How do you approach innovation and the hit-and-miss aspects of the process?

Scott Kinney:?One of our North Star's core components is investing in our future. Investing in our future means investing in our people. We talk about talent management as a core component. Also, underneath that, there are emerging initiatives with little immediate financial return but a disproportionate return in 2024, 2025, or 2026. It's okay to swing and miss. We will never innovate if it's not okay to swing and miss.

It's part of our culture, and I'll often stand up and talk about the things I've swung and missed on, but I'm still standing. The critical thing to remember is some of those swings and misses will be swings and hits, such as developing a partnership with the Ministry of Education in Egypt that's lasted nearly a decade and doing a lot of good. Sometimes you're going to knock it out of the park.

Aligned Vision

Adam Giery: As a CEO, there is sometimes the feeling of having to be the one with all the answers. Being comfortable with the unknown and taking a swing and miss is part of the process. How do you handle that pressure??

Scott Kinney:?You shouldn't have to believe you must be the smartest person in the room. Team members should all be smarter than I am. They should all know more about their functional area than I do. That is how you build great companies. In this sector, the best teams are likely to win. It's important people come in with an aligned vision that, first and foremost, we must deliver on the promises to the teachers and students we serve. If we do that, all those other things around business dynamics take shape.

Then it's essential to acknowledge the strengths of other people across the organization, learn from them, and ask questions. That doesn't mean you have to build consensus or can't make decisions quickly. But it means being open and listening thoughtfully to the talented folks within the organization. That is probably the most important thing.

It's our alignment with the mission that strikes people. I came from education. Many people at Discovery Education are former educators and principals who care deeply about the work. If we deliver on our promises and do good in classrooms and by teachers, this business will ultimately be great. We've focused on that over the last couple of decades.

Carving Out

Adam Giery:?Early on, Discovery Education connected to Discovery TV, Shark Week, and everything related. Everyone knows that channel. And you navigated a way to separate and keep the relationship together. Can you elaborate on that process?

Scott Kinney:?When I started at Discovery, it was actually privately owned. It wasn't even a public company. Now Discovery, Inc. is with Warner Brothers, and studios are all involved. It's amazing. I couldn't be more proud of working with Discovery. I learned the value of content while at Discovery.

I remember years ago when?Planet Earth?was being developed, and the person who founded Discovery, John Hendricks, insisted that it be shot in high definition (HD) when few people had HDTVs.

When a producer was asked why HD was used, he said, "Well, John Hendricks made us do it because even though people do not have HDTVs, in five years, they will." It was brilliant foresight around that commitment to the future of technology, and it took five years to film. The content was king at Discovery in those days, and I learned the value of brand and the importance of relationships. That's something we carry with us still today.

About five years ago, it was clear that we needed to get to a position where we could make everyday decisions on what was good for an educational technology company. So, with the permission and advocacy of Discovery Communications, we've spun out. We ended up building up half our company from that point forward. We had our products, sales, and marketing organizations but built it back up from there to the growth we experience today. Through it all, we concentrated on how we invest in our platform, services, and the teachers we serve.

There's nothing more important than education around the world. It is the cornerstone of what builds great societies. It is hard work. Anything we can do to make that easier for teachers and the education community remains at the heart of what we do.

To hear more from this remarkable interview with Scott Kinney of Discovery Education, head over to?Adam Giery's Capital Class , part of the Strategos Podcast Network.