NOW app

In the past three years, Instituto NOW has created and validated a methodology that enables and assesses the development of socioemotional skills. This methodology was tested in apprenticeship programs in Europe, and recently started to be implemented also in Brazil. However, there is a great need to scale this approach, so that it can reach organizations and schools - thus multiplying the number of beneficiaries and significantly increasing the social impact of the methodology. In order to leverage the development of socioemotional skills, making the Instituto NOW methodology accessible to a much larger number of apprentices and teachers / managers, we created the NOW App. This will positively help people in Latin America and the Caribbean to follow up with the development os students and help the measurement of the socioemotional skills. 

The transition to industry 4.0 and the future of work is a trending topic. According to The Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum, and support by Latin American Development Bank (CAF), between 2015 and 2020 more than a third (35%) of the skills that are considered important for the job market will have changed, with the top 10 skills needed being socio-emotional skills. Despite this scenario, learning programs, being formal and non-formal education, in general still find it very difficult asses, measure and improve the learners development in those skills. The NOW App is a solution to help organizations promote, measure and certify the development of skills for the 21st century. The App allows individualized learning that combines real-world experience with guided reflections in the virtual world. Using gamification, each learner becomes the protagonist of their own personal development based on skills, the facilitator can support the learner journey and the company can have an overview to the program visualizing what can be improved. 

Our target is people who - in the most varied spaces - work with education. Our main focus is actors in non-formal education, NGOs, social movements and associations. Of course schools, colleges and companies can also make use of our solution. Volunteer programs, internships, non-formal educational programs and especially young people, can take advantage of using the App to improve their chances of entering the world of work. The solution will make it possible for them to choose their learning goals and follow their own development. We are currently running a pilot program with young exchange students in Latin America and afterwards we will have an assessment to listen what worked and what can be improved in our solution.

The NOW App is a solution to help organizations promote, measure and certify the development of skills for the 21st century. Today the App has three users: the facilitator, the learner and the institution. For the facilitator the app helps to personalize the learning process through individual mentoring guides and offers a simple way to monitor and mesure the development of each individual selected competencies, combining different evaluation methodologies. For the learner, it offers an opportunity to follow his own development, personalize his/her journey and actively train each of the skills through elements of gamification, feedback and reflection, transforming real life experiences into learnings. For the institution, it shows an overview of participantes and the program indicators. The App uses gamification, artificial intelligence, self and peer evaluation as a methodology. 

The innovation is an application that can measure competencies (soft skills).This product does not exist on the market yet. The currently online products available are from specific niches with different focuses than our proposal, have different features, or different target population. Non of them are specifically to mesure the development on soft skills during a certain period of time. In addition the entire structure of the company is focused on developing agile loops, that is, we absorb errors and have the power to correct them quickly.

Activities: the learner can choose the competences he wants to focus on, allowing them to be protagonists of their own journey and adapt the ‘curriculum’ according to his/her needs; real life and online activities; track your on development; have a guided mentorship. From the facilitator perspective, mesure and assess the development of the learners; an overview of class and see what needs to focus on them. The institution dashboard summarizing through the report how are the competences being developed. 

Outputs: the learner develop a specific and personalized set of soft skills to apply on his/her projects 

Short terms outcome: that organizations, companies, universities and schools become aware that develop competences for the 21st century, also knows as soft skills, it's just important as hard skills. And doing this in a personalized way, with mentoring, gamification, artificial intelligence and combining real life activities, can also be more effective to the youth. 

Long terms outcome: that youth today, who will be future employees in 10 or 15 years from now, develop the emotional skills that the market looks for.

• 1. the current number of people you’re serving: 530 user until the end of 2020. 

• 2. the number you’ll be serving in one year: 1.000 users. 

• 3. the number you’ll be serving in five years: +50.000 users. 

2020: Launch the app in its full version, with the interface for learners, instructors and the organization. 

2021: Continuing developing the app and translate it to German and Spanish. 

2021/2022: Scale the product and expand to Germany. 

2023: Scale the product and expand to Latin America. 

2024: Continuing expanding to Latin America and Caribbean. 

We consider as a market barrier the following items: the high number of apps available for everything and the fact that each student needs 1 smartphone to use it; the existence of many online learning systems (LMS); the fact that institutions already use a system and are not willing to use another parallel system without integration; some customers are looking for a solution with a solid academic foundation, yet light and quick to use - elements that do not go very well with the skills metrification for the 21st century, which is a great pain in the market, since there are several matrixs and theoretical references that we have to be able to adapt.

1) "The high number of apps available for everything and the fact that each student needs 1 smartphone to use" - we will offer features that only the facilitator or the company need to use the app. 

2) "The existence of many online learning systems" - with gamification and personalized content we pretend to be more attractive to our target.

3) "The fact that institutions already use a system and are not available to use another parallel system without integration" - we will work on integrations opportunities or offer a way to merge our with theirs.

4) "Some customers are looking for a solution with a solid academic foundation, yet light and quick to use - elements that do not go very well with the skills metrification for the 21st century, which is a great pain in the market, since there are several matrixes and theoretical references that we have to be able to adapt" - we are working closely to Universities in Europe and in Brazil to have academic support as well. 

We see as a market opportunity the volunteer based organizations that operate on Latin America and Caribbean. Organizations willing to assess and evaluate development of their volunteers on soft skills and provide personalized content for that development. 

Full time staff: Elis Motta, Rahel Ashwanden, Fernanda Ogasawara. 

Part-time staff: Thais Buratto 

Contractors: Hellen Geremias, Ibsen Fahir, Salatiel Queiroz, Rodrigo Ribeiro, Matheus Urataki, Maurício Fritsch, Isabella Rosa. 

In the past 3 years NOW, our non-profit side based in Switzerland, and Instituto Now, for-profit side based in Brazil, has created and validated a methodology that enables and assesses the development of socio-emotional skills. This methodology was tested on learning programs in Europe, and recently began to be implemented also in Brazil at MBI in Education for the Professional of the Future on SENAC - Santa Catarina/Brazil. We research closely with Zurique University and Federal University of Santa Catarina/UFSC/Brazil. 

ChessecakeLabs is a web and mobile design and development company based in Brazil and the USA and is considered the third best app developer in Latin America. 

ChessecakeLabs - partner for the app and mobile development. 

Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC)- we work on partnership with researchers from psychometric laboratory to develop the content and the assessment methodologies for the app. 

Instituto NOW business model is a combination of SaaS (software as a service) where the hosted software is licensed to customers via a subscription plan and a consulting model.

Our product is a software as a service. 

Being selected would help us to expand your network to a market that we haven't accessed yet. Also an accelerator program would improve our business. 

Organizations with accelerator programs.