Maestría Knowmads

1. College graduates are not fully ready to face the challenges of a professional working life, and nowadays it takes about a year for a company to prepare them.

2. We want to create a remote learning and working program that prepares these graduates with "power skills", gives them consulting experience and creates in them the habit of being a knowmad, always intellectually hungry and curious.

3. With this program we seek to create a new standard of entry level skills, in which regardless of the school you come from, there is a guarantee of your preparation for a successful working or entrepreneurial life.

We live in Mexico, a country in Latin America where employment opportunities are limited, and having a professional career, even tough in some cases puts you in advantage, does not guarantee that you will get a job just out of college, least of all a job where you can fully exploit everything you learned in school.

Also, being on a new job requieres a set of abilities that are not currently being taught in most schools. Soft skills, socialization skills, emotional intelligence, active curiosity, assertive communication and many, many more are examples of these skill sets, that today seem essential to be successful in the workplace, sometimes even more so than technical or theoretical knowledge, and still are not a part of many professional curriculums.

This is why we want do design and develop this alternate and complementary program, strictly online, so that more and more young graduates can broaden their chances to find a good employment opportunity.

According to the OECD, there will be around 300 million people with a fresh bachelor degree, ready to enter the working force, and expecting a good entry level job at an important company. But even if they have the school credentials and knowledge acquired inside a classroom, that won't be enough to seem outstanding in such a competitive environment.

With 8 years of experience working with HR departments and recruiters in some of the biggest mexican and international companies, we have realized that the main differentiator of candidates is not the school they studied at, or even the career they chose, but their desire or hunger to succeed. When students show drive or grit, they are able to learn everything it takes to be succesful at their new role, and be a valuable asset to the company. But this learning curve and the time it takes to build this drive costs time and money. What we hope to achieve is shortening the learning curve, giving these students tools and skills, so they can be one step ahead and start making an impact way before being recruited.

We are firm believers in technology and e-learning is in our DNA.

We are looking to create our own e-learning platform, where students can have their classes, solve activities, have videocalls and chats, and have an overall learning experience remotely.

In that platform, we wish to develop a a very complete learning path, with activities, theoretical lessons, and everything needed to prepare these graduates with the power skills necessary to succeed in the first years of their working life.

In this case the main innovation we are looking for is that the "certification" or "endorsement" awarded after completion is not delivered by a federal authority but by a business council.

In other words, we would not seek the approval of the SEP (Secretariat of Public Education) in Mexico, we would stick to the current needs of a business council and this committee would be the one to endorse the graduates from the Maestría Knowmads

According to Mexico's Population Census in 2010 performed by INEGI (National Institute of Statistic and Geography) there were around 10,110,234 people with a bachelor's or college degree throughout the country. Of that number, only 8,865,931 were economically active. This means that around 12.3% of Mexico's college graduates were unemployed, even when they did finish and graduate from their universities (2020 census is currently ongoing), and that is only in Mexico, let alone every country in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We cannot assure that every person conforming that statistic is unemployed only because of a lack of power skills, but we are convinced that a lot of them would have more and greater opportunities if they were prepared beyond their academic knowledge.

By being better prepared to face your first job or venture, it will be easier for you to stand out and grow professionally. This growth would result in better performance for the company in which you work or faster generation of jobs by start-ups and entrepreneurs.

For this to happen, we want to create a conscience about the importance of going the extra mile on education, and being open to new and disruptive ways of learning. We want students who are just about to graduate, and recent graduates, to expand their skill set and become empowered and a lot more prepared for what is waiting for them in the professional environment.

You can find our Theory of Change model here: https://drive.google.com/file/...

As of now, our solution is still in a design phase, so we are serving no (0) users at the moment.

After the first year of our solution being implemented, we expect to be serving around 500 users, mostly inside of Mexico.

By the first five years, we would expect to be present in most countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, serving around 10,000 users.

We want to help shape the professional future of millions of young men and woman who are looking for the work opportunity that will start and shape their careers.

Our main goal is for at least 500 students, recently graduated from universities in Mexico to experience the Maestría Knowmads and ensure we accelerate their growth as a professional or entrepreneur.

In 5 years we clearly see that we can be helping around 10,000 young people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to achieve this goal.

The main challenge we face as a country, that affects our solution plan, is that schools and universities mostly obey organizations that regulate learning programs, like the SEP (Secretariat of Public Education) in the case of Mexico, leaving very little flexibility in terms of career plans and academic information shared in class.

The second barrier that is strongly related to the first one, is the speed at which new currents and content are generated, culturally and socially, which completely overcomes the response capacity of the universities and the SEP. This leaves us with great gap between what the working industry is looking for in new recruits, and what recently graduated students actually know or how they behave.

Astrolab as a company is a disciplined team, made up by consultants, designers, engineers, teachers and technology experts, and we are willing to put all of our human resources to work in making this solution come to life. Surely, assuming the economical costs for us will be a challenge, but we are certain that if it has not stopped us until now, we can overcome it again.

For starters, we will not affiliate our study programs to organizations such as SEP. The Maestría Knowmads will me completely managed and controlled by Astrolab as a company.

We will work with a network of consulting and learning experts to create the up to date study programs (with not only theoretical, but also practical application).

As we mentioned, we are willing to put all of our resources to work on making this come to life, looking for partnerships, sponsors and maintaining focus in what's really important: making a real impact.

We did not select “My solution is already being implemented in Latin America/Caribbean”.

We would definitely focus the first year as a trial and testing year in Mexico. The second year we would expand to Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia and Argentina. From the third year on, we would be working by request, reaching a lot more countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Maestría Knowmads is a program designed and developed by the team in Astrolab.

Astrolab is a mexican consulting firm, which has been working for about 9 years with national and internacional companies across various industries such as Cemex, Novartis, Mars Wrigley, Whirlpool, John Deere, FEMSA, The Home Depot, Citibanamex, to name a few, in helping their teams find a better way fo working, through boosting their collaboration, enhancing their communication and helping them design the best learning experiences.
We have worked with methodologies such as Business Storytelling, Lean Change Management, Design Sprint, Design Thinking, among many others.

Astrolab is formed by a team of 20 people, from which about two or three would be working full-time on the project, another three or four would be helping part-time, and the rest of the team would be there for specific support.

Also, as part of the learning process, each student will have direct contact with one member of the Astrolab team, selected based on interests, career, previous skills, context and some other criteria to find a fit that will help the student get a lot more out of the program.

Ours is a multi-disciplined team, formed by people with backgrounds in engineering, design, education, instructional design, even marketing, communications, legal, and many, many more disciplines that complement each other in a very unique way.

We have very pragmatic points of view, complemented by very creative minds and analytical thinking. We also have incredibly talented programers and tech-ed experts which are a key element in the development of our solution. We are a team that is profoundly driven and passionate about the possibility of impacting the future of work for the better.

Astrolab recently merged with Knowmads, a firm of learning consultants that has helped us improve our services, specially in terms of learning experiences and instructional design.

We would also be looking for partnerships and the expertise other consulting and learning experts as part of the board or council team, and maybe to be mentors or coaches to some of the students (We still don't have clear names). 

College students in their last years before graduating, or those who recently graduated. our main beneficiaries. We are planning on designing and creating a learning experience that will truly make an impact on improving their work opportunities and professional future. On the other hand we have our clients, which are companies and organizations, and individuals, that would like to participare in this solution as a sponsor, a partner, a mentor. We plan on giving free participation for our customers, or maybe charging a small fee to generate income that can help us cover some of the cost of the development and implementation of the solution.

We will provide both the content and the platform so the beneficiaries can have a complete learning experience, with a well thought academic program created by our expert instructional designers, graphic designers, programers and the valuable input and expertise of business consultants and workshop developers. Also, we want to provide a bridge to close the gap between companies and our students newly empowered by our contents and activities.

We plan on using using the best and most user friendly technology to deliver the learning experience, designing our program with well-designed contents that cover the topics that are essential to achieve our goal of training these new professionals with power skills for their new working life. Also, we will provide the bridge between companies and new candidates by pairing some of our collaborators in the corporate world with the students taking the Maestría Knowmads.

- One part will be funded by Astrolab as an organization, providing economical economical, intellectual and human resources.

- A second idea is that the benefited or "partner" companies provide a certain amount of scholarships or sponsorships per semester, considering that in return they will probably be saving time and resources invested in training, by helping previously helping to shorten the learning curve of thousands of new recruits.

- It is also considered that part of the funding will come from the projects in which the students will be working and learning from during their experience in the Maestría Knowmads.

Connecting directly with universities, without the relationship with the SEP, (Secretariat of Education) or any other traditional regulatory institution, it would be easier for them to help us in the selection of young people suitable for the Maestría Knowmads.

Also, we want to have direct connection with experts that could save us a lot of time in the content creation and curation. In addition to this, they could teach subjects and share their experience in the Maestría Knowmads that otherwise, in some universities, is not possible for them, because their program and expertise often does not comply with the education secretariats.

We believe that winning this challenge will give us the push and access to this universities, experts, but also also companies that could in the future fund the program to obtain more accelerated talent.

We did not select "Other".

We want to connect with universities in each country, we consider they are the bridge to create meaningful relationships between us, the companies and the eligible students for the Maestría Knowmads.

Also, we want to partner up with experts and consultants in different fields who can provide us and our students with their knowledge and experience, and be a part of the Maestría Knowmads as mentors, teachers and even members of the board.

Lastly, we want to connect with the top companies globally, so they can be our partners in providing work and learning opportunities to our students.