Five sectors ripe for disruption

So for all those wantrepreneurs out there, here are five sectors that could help kick-start your start-up.

E-learning

E-learning has come a long way over the last decade but is still in its infancy when it comes to mass adoption and acceptance. That is likely to change over the next five years.

The key to unlocking material public and private educational budgets could well be adaptive learning. Personalised learning tools and aids that learn about your abilities and, based on your progress, tailor what to teach you next, could lead to a self-made educational revolution.

In the corporate world too, e-learning courses have a lot of growing up to do. Relatively low adoption and lack of engagement and innovation have dogged early results – with most, in reality, learning little more than a souped-up version of an old fashioned paper and pen.

Here, as in education, the secret is likely to be the adoption of gamification principles used so successfully in the apps we all download and use every day.

In start-ups, they can make e-learning fun, challenging and rewarding, to enable students to graduate with flying colours.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), aimed at providing mass-market open-access learning opportunities through sharing information and educational materials, as well as building communities for students and teachers, are also likely to open up very interesting new business models and opportunities.

Rising costs of education create demand for more useful and cost-effective vocational training and specialised skills for a new economy – all major business opportunities.

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Andy Yates is an experienced entrepreneur, adviser for a portfolio of fast growing businesses and investor-director at Huddlebuy – Europe’s largest daily money-saving site for small businesses.

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