We have been developing educational products for ten years, principally in the areas of entrepreneurship and innovation. We've developed books, games, simulations, seminars and training courses.
For every product we've developed we've designed the content according to two main principles: a conceptual framework that provides an organising structure; and actionable knowledge in the form of prompts and questions that provide practical guidance. For instance when developing our entrepreneurial material we asked, "How do we get someone to think and act like an entrepreneur?" And we've taken all the knowledge you'd expect to find in a book or course for entrepreneurs and restructured it so that you can apply it directly.
What we realised is that we could apply the same principles to virtually any content. By identifying and building a conceptual framework and reworking content into practical questions you can turn ordinary content into rich actionable knowledge.
Once we realised this we realised that we could use software to present the conceptual framework and key questions in a user friendly way to provide practical guidance. We call this cognitive guidance, because the software helps you set your mind's agenda for what to think about next.
Not all books are suitable for this treatment. In fact we find that some best sellers are full of interesting stories, anecdotes and jokes but thin on conceptual content. Yet other books are packed with practical guidance and easy to adapt to Cognician.
If you’re an author or publisher that is what we can do with your books. We'll unpack the conceptual framework and convert the core material into practical questions that get people to think about their own context as if they were borrowing your mind.
Sometimes you want people to think in a straight line about some issue and how it applies to their own life or business. At other times you want people to think outside the box. That's where Cognician is great. It guides people to think systematically or imaginatively as needed.
With Cognician you can offer readers a lot more than an ebook. Cognician is the original thinking guide. People will be able not just to read your content but to interact with your ideas and apply them to their own context using a web browser or the iPhone.
Does this sound like something you'd like to explore further? If so, please visit our Cognician community site where you can participate in the development of this great new thinking tool.