The PressPectives Podcast | Fionnuala Duggan: Inside The Economist’s online courses

2024-11-19
The-PressPectives-Podcast-Fionnuala-Duggan

In this episode of the PressPectives podcast, Fionnuala Duggan, Executive Director Education at The Economist, divulges the strategy behind the renowned publisher’s online course portfolio targeted at mid-career executives.    

To begin, Fionnuala reflects on how her career trajectory—from a background in experimental physics to leadership roles in digital transformation and education—mirrors her commitment to critical thinking, innovation, and societal progress; three priorities that are central to the work she’s doing today. 

Under Fionnuala’s leadership, Economist Education has leveraged The Economist’s editorial expertise to create courses on topics like writing, critical thinking, AI, data visualization, decision making and climate change. 

Fionnuala shares how Economist Education has collaborated with the newsroom and external experts to ensure high-quality content and where she sees AI playing a role in enhancing—but never replacing—the human element of teaching. 

 

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Transcript

Ruairí Doyle

[0:07] Hello and welcome to another episode of PressPectives where we are diving into topics at the intersection of technology and publishing together with incredible guests. The Economist is respected globally for its independent analysis on the most important issues including current affairs, international business politics, technology and culture but its impact does not end with its editorial. In 2021 The Economist group launched its education pillar providing courses for mid-career executives to learn invaluable skills for the modern leader across a range of topics like business writing data visualization storytelling critical thinking and decision how to apply AI and business along with courses in international relations and climate change. To explore how it all came to be and what the learnings have been Fionnuala Duggan joins us the founder and executive director of Economist Education. Fionnuala you are very welcome to the show where in the world are you joining us from and what are you up to this week.

Fionnuala Duggan

[1:17] Thank you Ruairí for such a great introduction. It's a pleasure to be here thank you for the invitation you're in and I'm in London in North London and where the market is big tourist attraction and here we're very happy after the recent election results. and we have a new wave of optimism and hope I think in the UK  with the new labor government that's just won with a huge Landslide.

Ruairí Doyle

[1:50] I was going to ask you about that it was a whirlwind election I think it was 25 days in total the general election campaign first government in change of government in 14 years.

Fionnuala Duggan

[2:06] I mean everybody certainly living in London which tends to lean towards labor around where I live which is yeah there's a lot of hope. Especially among young people so my children who were late teens and 20s are so happy to see a change of government in place everybody got very sick of the conservatives and all their changes of prime minister over the last 10 years or so. Particularly in recent years so it's the young people particularly are very excited about seeing new government.  

Ruairí Doyle

[2:38] Fionnuala of course I want to pick your brains today on all things Economist Education however I'd like to start by spending a little bit of time on your own very interesting background you studied experimental physics at Trinity College. You hold an MBA and then I think after that there's going of three broad phases to your career you first had a phase which was a series of roles in digital transformation and media publishing and entertainment and I  guess the role is a chief digital officer in companies like McMillan and Random House. And then moved into the education world and took on a series of operational roles in companies like Core Smart, Future Learn, Informa and today of course you're you're working with the Economist Education and along the way you've done a lot and you're still working in a non-executive capacity with different boards. You've been involved with and were founder of the BAFTA interactive entertainment Awards, you've been on the board of the Irish Independent or Independent news and media group as it was formerly known before Media Haus which I also spent a little bit of time in. You've been involved in the board of Yale University Press, London Metropolitan University and today you're doing a number of non-executive work in European corporate venture capital and with some young entrepreneurial companies including the tomorrow University in Berlin but I want to go back to the start I'm curious uh what drew you to experimental physics originally and how did that then meander its way to digital transformation. 

Fionnuala Duggan

[4:31] Experimental physics is a fascinating subject and I think I liked the challenge. I like the challenge of doing something hard and once you get into physics you realize what a creative subject it actually is and how much imagination the top physicists in the world have because they've got to imagine all kinds of weird and wacky ideas. So it's you know essentially a subject that's kind of grounded in facts I  suppose and maths is the language but within that  you've got the opportunity for enormous amount of really out of box thinking, creative thinking, imaginative thinking so it's a really it's a great subject and you can it appeal to all kind of different aspects of different types of people so I really enjoyed that. And then my final year I built a huge laser which my kids find really cool so I built this enormous laser with some PhD students and we it was in a big dark room and it was about three meters long wow it wasn't the same as a Star Wars kind of laser it was something that had a medical application so you know it's also can be very handsome as well so it's a great foundational I think to do a degree in physics I recommend.

Ruairí Doyle

[5:47] And I have to ask is the laser still alive today or it's just photos now?

Fionnuala Duggan

[5:55] I think they might have moved on it was kind of decades ago so they probably moved on so as you as you went through different phases.

Ruairí Doyle

[6:07] In your career from digital media and transformation to education and now of course all the board work that you do in parallel with that I mean are there fundamentals from the experimental physics that stay true across all the different sectors and industries that you've worked in.

Fionnuala Duggan

[6:20] I mean I think one of the things that is kind of rising at the moment is critical thinking and one of our courses  in that about critical thinking and given the complexity of the world and all the data  that we have and all the geopolitical unrest finding a path forwards often means you know really refining your thinking skills and there's actually a I think a strong crossover between scientific thinking and critical thinking. So one of the things you learn when you do any science degree is scientific thinking and also you learn to be data-driven and that's also something which is very important in the world any science degree engineering any stem kind of degree and others too you will learn about looking at data sourcing data comparing data and making data based decisions. So those are a couple of the things that are that are still you know that are very important these days and that I got from my degree but then if you also think around you know the limits of knowledge  which is kind of one philosophical question one of the things you learn in physics is that people are always throwing out old things that they thought were true and finding a new replacement. So you constantly you're led to question everything and sort of think a little bit more out of the box and that's also something which is which I'm very drawn to and a lot of entrepreneurs and people who like Innovation and Technology growth and that's going about too so I think that's also something that you can really get from a scientific background.

Ruairí Doyle

[7:51] Agree and I'm curious then from digital transformation you then stepped into the world of  
diving into education. What was the catalyst or if I can use that word the catalyst or the motivation to dip your toe into the education sector?  

Fionnuala Duggan

[8:10] Then so like I think education is just such an important part of everybody's lives it's such an important part of society and it's such part of economic growth it's such an important part of the strength of a company or a country's economy so it's such a vital part of our modern life and education is a pathway people use it as a pathway to get you know further ahead in their career. Maybe to move countries maybe to earn money to send back home. So you know education is just so important and with all the changes that have happened in digital which I've witnessed in the record business and Publishing in other sectors you can see how all of those platforms and products and connectivity can really help to transform education and modernize it in a way that improves learning outcomes and changes people's availability of Education to people and the distribution of education and their engagement with it. So there's a huge amount that can be improved in the delivery of education through techology. So I was very excited to find a way to be involved with that to help to drive that forwards and you know and it's just a really exciting space and a very worthwhile space.

Ruairí Doyle

[9:29] And today you're heading up Economist education, I'm curious what was the original strategy or inspiration behind Economist education?

Fionnuala Duggan

[9:44] Yeah so you know Rory you worked a lot in media and I have too and media as a sector is suffering you know hugely from competition from digital media as you know and also the proliferation of content online. So the business model for media is under attack from many different sides. But yet and all media businesses have enormous strengths they have enormous brand they reach they have loyalty they have capabilities into consumer markets, professional markets to reach into those markets. Media companies have editorial expertise that spells the written word digital publishing audio publishing video that and all of those things if you could build all of those things into another sector that doesn't have the same competitive issues well that would be a really good thing. So the media company could grow into that new sector the thinking was that we would take what The Economist has and the an that are relevant in the education space and build out an education business.

Ruairí Doyle

[10:56] On that relevance note we talked earlier in the intro where I introduced some of the the different areas and courses that Economists Education offers. How did you and your team land on those courses specifically was it it mapped to the strengths of The Economist from that point of view, or you also did a mapping to the market.

Fionnuala Duggan

[11:20] So it was a bit of both really so you know thinking about so our first two courses were our professional  
Communications business writing course that was the second one and the first course was our international relations course and if you think about The Economist those are those are the two things you think about you think about the quality of the writing and the education through writing and you think about The Economist's geopolitics coverage it's global geopolitics coverage and and how good that is. So we thought that we would actually start our portfolio with the two things that we're most known for and it's so happened that one of those was a skills course. The writing course and one of those was a topic course or an insights course if you like and we thought well okay we're not sure which of those areas is going to be biggest market for us so we'll we'll try we'll start out with a skills course. Very strongly identified with our brand and we'll start out with a top our inside course those it takes it round.

Ruairí Doyle

[12:10] And over the last three years, I guess, it's evolved and now there's a number of different courses. I'm curious, which ones are the most popular or where you see the most demand across all these diverse courses that you offer?

Fionnuala Duggan

[11:41] Yeah, so what we did then, whereas we built out other courses in those two veins, so in the stills area, which actually is a much larger market in corporate training than topics. So we decided that we would double down on the skilled area and we built out, we thought very long and hard about this and had lots of workshops and discussed with our editorial colleagues in the newsroom to get their views. And we looked at the market and did some of the research and did a lot of thinking as well. And we decided that we would try to identify the skills that we thought modern leaders needed in order to succeed and build their businesses and grow in the current age against all of the new technology coming, the AI rising, and also with the geopolitical unrest, it makes it very complicated to lead an organization. So we then thought, okay, we'll build out courses that will support our audience to navigate complexity. So the writing course is a very strong course and it's working very, very well for us. It represents over half of our sales actually. It's phenomenally successful. But other courses that we've built have complement that and that are also very popular are the Critical Thinking and Decision Making course, where we have Daniel Kahneman, and many others. Our Data Visualization course, which is also very, very popular. We have an AI skills course that we've launched just recently that has a lot of stuff in it around property engineering and really practical skills and ways to use AI in your job right now. And we have an Intergovernmental and Persuasion course, which is an absolute key and evergreen skill in end development. So we're building this lovely portfolio of all the skills that you need for your team and an organization. And then on the topic side, on the insight side, we've chosen a longer, more involved format, Originance Relations course. It's John, also about that climate course and a FinTech course. And those deal with the detailed history and up-to-date-ness of those different topics. And the climate course is around making the trade-offs that a business needs to make in order to get to net zero and continue to compete in their business area.

Ruairí Doyle

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