BENJAMIN SAVAGE
GONG MEDITATIONS

Challenge

During the pandemic Kellogg School of Management, a premier global provider of C-level executive education, had the opportunity to grow its online program catalog but faced strategic and operational hurdles in aggressively scaling their academic offerings.

 

Complicated by deep-seated operational silos and preexisting contract structures that limited content access and created revenue share burdens, necessitating a new content strategy to maximize profit margins.

 

Additional issues included the absence of a data-driven approach to align program development with global market demand and a lack of localized digital backups, which posed a risk to institutional property.

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Process

Phased approach focusing on alignment, modernization, and scalable innovation:
 

1. Discovery and Alignment Conducted audits with faculty, administration, technology, and partner stakeholders to align priorities and identify gaps.
    

2. Market Research Used global market scans for competitive analysis and proprietary research and LinkedIn role-demand analysis to identify target segments. 
    

3. Product Modernization UI/UX redesign, Single Sign-On, and updated and centralized branding.
    

4. Data and Content Architecture Built a centralized data lake that tagged and organized four years of executive education content into a searchable library of reusable modular assets.
    

5. AI Integration and Innovation Leveraged AI to create new products from existing assets, reducing production costs and enabling pilots for digital twins and chatbots

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Outcome

Between 2021-2025 Kellogg’s online exec programs experienced significant growth (10-20% YOY), particularly driven by intense demand for its new curriculum including the new “mini certification” product line developed as a result of this strategic overhaul. The school has continually expanded a robust catalog of online programs, all at significant margins and surpassing year over year revenue goals.

 
Having come to Kellogg to grow online executive education, it became evident that there were additional opportunities to contribute resulting in significant efficiency and marketing gains. 

These efforts resulted in a more agile, data-empowered organization with measurable gains in both efficiency and market reach. The project successfully put into place production processes and protocols, established robust risk mitigation through new cybersecurity measures, localized backup processes that secured Kellogg’s intellectual property and ensured operational independence from third-party partners. Efficiency gains were achieved by leveraging AI-driven content assembly to prototype and deploy programs with minimal financial investment. Participant satisfaction scores increased due to the improved user experience. Ultimately, the creation of an AI-ready repository has provided a sustainable, scalable framework for continuous content reuse, tailored to specific seniority levels and evolving global skillsets.