How Nature's Scitable Was Designed and Built
Scitable: A NextGen Ecosystem for Learning & Teaching Science, Part 2
By Patricia Seybold, CEO and Senior Consultant
October 15, 2009

NETTING IT OUT

Scitable (Scitable.com) is a 21st century online learning resource for students and faculty designed to replace textbooks. It's the first offering from Nature Publishing Group's new Nature Education division.

Scitable was officially launched in January 2009 with a focus on the study of genetics. Over the next several years, Scitable's content will be expanded to cover many scientific disciplines.

In Part 1 of this case study, we described the Scitable offering and how it is currently being used by students and faculty in the field of genetics.

In Part 2, we take you behind the scenes to describe how the Nature Education team was put together and how they designed Scitable.com. We'll describe what they learned along the way and where they're going.

HOW TO INNOVATE WITHIN A LARGE ORGANIZATION

We've all heard that innovating within an existing company is difficult. Most of the success stories about internal innovation share a common story line: You separate the team of innovators from the "mother ship." You set them up in their own separate space. You provide them with the freedom to challenge the parent company's culture and assumptions. You offer air cover from internal politics. You give them a clear, high-level charter and mandate. You supply limited resources and a short timeline. You let them figure out the rest. Nature Publishing Group followed this classic intrapreneurship model to develop Scitable, their new Nature Education venture.

Blank Slate Approach

I asked Vikram Savkar if he was really able to start the project as a blank slate. He said, "Yes, Nature Publishing Group created a situation where I could do that. They encouraged me to take a white piece of paper and create a new piece of business." Vikram became the Publishing Director for a new Nature Education division. He decided to base the group in Cambridge, Massachusetts because Cambridge is a magnet for life sciences research as well as being the heart of Boston's academic community.

Ring-Fenced Innovation Team

"We created a walled garden around Nature Education," Vikram said. "We ring-fenced the group." The management team told him, "We are giving you the freedom to execute the vision, shielding you from all the normal politics that come into play."

HOW THE SCITABLE TEAM BUILT & TESTED THEIR VISION

Creating the Vision

Vikram Savkar launched Nature Education in February 2007. He spent the first two months documenting his vision, trial ballooning, and getting feedback. "I began by documenting the vision I had from my many years in the textbook publishing industry noticing how broken the model was," he said.

ISSUES. "When you're in the textbook industry, you can't help but gradually develop a realization that the people who buy your products – students – don't really love what they're buying," Vikram observed. "That's a pretty big red flag for any industry. The question is, why wasn't it hurting us? The industry as a whole was growing three or four percent a year. The answer, it became clear, was that the normal dynamics of a healthy market were being smoke-screened in the education space, because students don't choose their textbooks…their faculty do. And faculty continued to assign the kinds of textbooks that they had always been comfortable with. So, on the surface, the numbers looked fine. But when you looked under the hood, you saw that actually there were significant and disturbing sell-through trends – students buying more and more used books or buying no books at all. So it was clear that at some point in the near future there was going to be a big problem. And I wanted to get out of and ahead of that problem."

VISION. What was Vikram's vision? "I wanted to create the kinds of products that students would really find natural and intuitive, and that faculty therefore would also love. Such products would be online and/or mobile, would be hyperlinked and open in a way that allowed students to self-guide rather than to have a one-size-fits-all experience, would be social and collaborative, and would be interactive. So that was the starting point for Nature Education, though where we actually arrived was a considerable evolution from that starting-point as a result of a lot of feedback and testing."

Getting Feedback from the Education Ecosystem

"I needed feedback," Vikram pointed out, "so I would take pieces of the vision and trial balloon them with subject matter experts in related fields like learning management systems." He met with folks from the gaming industry, from the smartphone industry, from the testing industry, from the team that worked on the Encyclopedia Britannica online initiative, as well as with other innovative, visionary folks in a number of related fields. "I trial ballooned with science faculty, science students, heads of departments, department chairs, classroom teachers, and thought leaders from every piece of the ecosystem, including relevant technology providers," Vikram said.

Presenting the Vision and Getting Buy In

Vikram presented his vision to Nature Publishing Group in London the end of March 2007 and got directional buy in. The executives liked what they heard. They gave him the green light to embark on two subsequent stages: 1) flesh out the vision and 2) build a complete blueprint for the product, for the marketing plan, and for the business plan.

He agreed to take his vision, build a team to flesh it out, and spend the next seven or eight months to create a plan and to develop a blueprint for the products and for the marketing channel.

He received executive approval to staff his team at that point.

Building the Innovation Business Team

Vikram knew that he needed key people and roles to flesh out his small innovation team on the business development side: a product manager and an editorial director. He recruited Michael Powers as Executive Product Manager. The two men had worked well together on projects in the past. Since genetics was to be the focus for their first product, he hired Kenna Shaw from the American Genetics Society to be the Executive Editor and to develop the content. Vikram led the business strategy and marketing planning. Scott McCool, Nature Publishing Group’s manager for all web product hosting, led the systems architecture and deployment activities. Robin McGuire later joined the team as Senior Marketing Manager.

Nature's Scitable Development Time Line

© 2009 Patricia Seybold Group

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