öbv - How a strategy can ensure that every person's potential can be fully realised in life.
About öbv (Klett Group)
The Austrian federal publishing house is one of the largest education providers in Austria and one of the leading publishers in the field of teaching and learning materials with a portfolio of around 3,000 titles and almost 50,000 digital materials – from classic textbooks and digital teaching materials to support programmes for teachers. The Austrian Emperor Maria Theresa founded the öbv back in 1772 as a publishing house "with well-considered courage, good advice and right knowledge" in the course of the introduction of compulsory education. The öbv has been part of the Klett Group since 2007.
The challenge:
Educational publishers face some pretty big challenges: On the one hand, facing all the challenges of education and the education system - probably the most scrutinised system in the world. And on the other hand, the challenges of the publishing industry, in which a "world to the power of x" is developing from analogue to digital and everything in between. New developments in neuroscience, digitalisation, didactics and much more make it possible to provide more and more people with more and more education and to leverage their potential.
The aim was to develop a strategy that would provide convincing answers to these key challenges and thus actively shape the future of education. In the case of the öbv, this was an almost epic question. Founded around 250 years ago in the course of the introduction of compulsory education in Austria, the aim was to live out this educational mission as innovatively as possible in the spirit of its "Theresian tradition".
How we put this together in a strategy:
Through a joint process with management, selected executives and fellow thinkers at öbv.
Step #1:
What can we do to bring together what belongs together: best education and real life? What must our purpose, our vision and our values be in order to master current and future challenges in education? Together, we began by delving deep into the worlds of the öbv to discover its culture, ancestral beliefs, hidden patterns and potentials.
Step #2:
In the enlightened tradition and "well-considered courage" of the founder, we scrutinised the past. It became clear: We can best secure our future as a company if we do not rest on the successes of the past, but instead forge new paths for education and our education system. This is not about completely reinventing ourselves. It's about developing a vision together: Of a world in which every person could realise their full potential in life.
Step #3:
No empty commitment, but a full programme: step by step and area by area, we went into "backward roadmapping" to find out what is already necessary today to achieve the major goals of the vision. The crowning finale after 6 months of joint strategy work: the "öbv hoch x" day with around 100 employees at the Allianz Stadium – a specially developed workshop format in which everyone was guided through a kind of interactive "strategy course" and in which everyone's opinions, input and ideas came to the fore. With everyone focussing on possible future transformations of the education funding system, öbv was now well on its way to a future that can simply do more.
How does a predominantly analogue textbook publisher manage to become a courageous visionary educational company?
"The front is always where nobody knows their way around. None of us know what the future will look like. But those who take a closer look at the future simply know more about it. We have to make assumptions in order to actively shape our future and not be overwhelmed by it. And then draw the right conclusions and derive effective strategies. Disruptive is the ideal companion for this."
Max Schulyok
Management Ernst Klett Verlag