Hi John
Apologies for the obscurity of my metaphor and thanks for asking :)
In this context I was speaking about the motivation of the business model which in this case is about disrupting the act of teaching and schools themselves. So rather an innovation to improve existing teaching capacity and school facilities it seeks to replace them entirely and in perpetuity.
The “fish” in this metaphor is teaching and to a lesser extent content. Whilst Bridge may argue that they are building capacity in teaching this is achieved by reducing the act of teaching to scripted content delivery that is owned by them. Ownership of all of the content, software, textbooks, data, etc is retained by Bridge. Thus a nation, e.g. Liberia, that becomes dependent on, in this example, Bridge will be dependent on that corporation for a long time with public capital flowing out of the nation.
This isn’t a new business model, it is one that has been very successful for multinational corporations such as Pearson who have shaped and monetised public education by selling content and reinforcing demand for this content by selling measurement systems. I’m surprised that with so much money being invested in EdTech that so little has been directed at disrupting these old dinosaurs that are stifling positive transformation.
For further reading try:
Hopes this helps
