Written by Jussi Meriläinen

LessonLab Ltd. has existed only for months, but there are already big plans for it’s future. Miska Visuri tells us how the company came to be and how the R2B project gave them larger perspective into utilizing already thrilling idea!

LessonLab, a company developing a project management learning game, came to be when professor Jaakko Kujala introduced his idea as a candidate for Business Finland’s Research to Business (R2B) project. Miska Visuri was in the same pitching event and got instantly excited about Kujala’s idea.

“We sat down to discuss and were assured that our cooperation would work. In the end we did the R2B application together” Visuri recalls.

Visuri has 13 years of previous experience from previously running a globally operating and expanding business, and on this basis he is responsible for running LessonLab’s daily activities and developing the business.

“From the beginning it was clear, that everyone focuses on their own area of expertise”, Visuri emphasizes.

Kujala and other team members are experts of project management with long academic careers. They are responsible for the actual product development, sales, and marketing.

Read the introduction of Visuri and the team here.

A Product Proven in Practice

LessonLab’s teaching platform is based on a board game designed by Kujala, which he used in teaching at university. Already back then arose the idea of making an easily distributed web version of the game. Their current business partner, Oulu-based game studio Ludocraft, made the first prototype of the game before the R2B project.

There are two planned target markets for the game: higher education and corporate training. About the differences between these markets Visuri mentions:

“Higher education organizations adopt new methods slower, but their needs are usually similar, so the same solutions can be applied. Corporations on the other hand are braver in adoption-vice, but they almost always need tailored solution to train their employees.”

“In the beginning we intend to offer a training package, where we arrange teaching sessions utilizing our game. With that income we then develop the first commercial version of the product and sell it to our customers”, Visuri explains.

The Important Part is to Assure Yourself

Even though they had faith in the commercial potential of the product from the day one, in the R2B project they assured the product was functional. They also figured out, if there’s a will to pay for this kind of product.

“Surprising aspect in the feedback was that some people said immediately that they wouldn’t pay for this. In the longer conversations, though, it became evident that the product was great for learning.”

According to Visuri the greatest success in the project was assuring themselves and realizing the full potential of the product.

“A remarkable benefit from the R2B project was the encouragement to widen our scope and research the field of corporate training. It’s tempting to stay on your comfort zone, which in our case was the field of higher education”, he remarks.

“It was also surprising, how little competition there was for the product. Similar solutions by others were highly specific and revolved around singular cases. LessonLab on the other hand is a platform, that can be adapted to different use cases.

At the moment the platform has been used for 20 different solutions, and only part of them are commercialized.

A Way Forward Guided by Grand Plans

As an advice for those getting into R2B project Visuri encourages in thinkin about the bigger picture and what your business aims for. It’s important to think how to get far by small steps.

For LessonLab, the short-term growth is in new subjects: applications outside their expertise can be developed with suitable professional partners.

Their further goal, though, is something much bigger: “ We want to combine globally the educational needs, education content creators and providers of education, and create a centralized marketplace for them. Like Appstore, but for education market”, Visuri Envisions.