I’m sure you’ve noticed that over
the past ten years, the K-12 market has
experienced dramatic changes, unlike
anything most of us have lived through
before. One of those shifts is the emer-
gence of free products and services,
which may now or sometime soon be a
threat to your business
When we think about free prod-
ucts and shifts in the education
market, the company that comes
to mind is Google. Educators are
increasingly using Google’s free
cloud-based offerings, Google apps,
instead of purchasing similar pro-
grams from suppliers like Microsoft.
They’ve shaken up our notions about
what educators value and the brands
they engage with. Google’s success
has fueled the idea that everything
should be free.
One Piece of a Puzzle of Change
But it is not just free products that
are shaking up the K-12 education
market. Multiple factors are driving
the need for suppliers to consider
reinventing their business model. In-
creasing acceptance by K-12 decision
makers for free apps has triggered
budget cutting for traditional prod-
ucts, adding to the sense that we are
on shaky ground. So how have you (or
should you), an established provider
with a traditional business model,
respond to this shift in the market?
Should you develop a free offering?
Should you drop the price of your
product and try to compete with free?
6 essentials | fall 2017
What to
Do When
FREE
PRODUCTS
and
SERVICES
Threaten Your
Business
BY GLEN MCCANDLESS
Should you cut your staff and expens-
es and try to survive?
Tough questions. As is the case when
a new competitor threatens, sometimes
our response is denial. We hope our
customers won’t be tempted or that the
company offering the free product or
service will fail. Now may be a good time
to consider why we react that way and to
look to other industries beyond our own
domain for advice. But where to begin?
Start by Freeing Up Your Mind
A starting point for you could be to
really free up your mind to the possi-
bilities. One of my early experiences
in the ed tech industry, when I was at
Apple, was a presentation I attended
by futurist and business advisor Joel
Barker. I encourage you to read one of
his books or watch any of his YouTube
videos because it is powerful stuff. Joel’s
focus is studying paradigms, which are
patterns of behavior that blind us to
impactful trends. When I use the word
“blind” I mean it literally. Our brains are
programmed not to recognize change.
Could Anything Be Offered
for Free?
How far could the free trend go?
Might it die off? I have come to con-
clusion that almost anything could be
offered for free to schools, even tech-
nology devices that cost thousands of
dollars in the past. The idea of offering
free stuff to educators isn’t new. Over
the course of nearly 30 years that I’ve
been in the trenches of the education
space, I’ve seen dramatic price drops
in products, and I’ve done my share of
giving away products and services to
secure customer relationships. I’m sure
you’ve seen educators loading up shop-
ping carts with free teaching materials
at conferences, and asking you for free
product samples and free product trials.