The celebration fo the moment: 4000+ learners in just one course

The one thing that triggered this article is that:

I'm super happy to share that since a few days there are now more than 4000 people who have joined the free course "What is Service Design?".

This was one of the first pieces of content I've published on the Swiss Innovation Academy website back when I started it 5 years ago.

Thank you so much to all of you who helped me reach this new milestone!

A look at the overall numbers

If you are curious and ask yourself: "Okay but that's just one course! How are things going overall for the Swiss Innovation Academy project?". Here are a few numbers from my Podia dashboard (the tool I use to run this website).

What we see is that over the years I've served over 14'000 people with my courses, templates, tools and books. And I did a bit more than 31K selling a few of these things, as most of the content from this website is free. So definitely not money that can make a salary, but enough to pay for the tools, services and proofreading costs.

In fact I often say that the Swiss Innovation Academy is like a hobby that pays for itself. Where some people have a passion for Harley Davisons, and put a lot of hours and money into their motorbike. My passion is for Service Design. I put a lot of hours and money into it too. The only difference is that it's a hobby that pays its own bills. Which makes not a great business, but a very lovely hobby.

When I started this project I said to myself that I wanted to also document the journey of building this project so that others could be motivated to maybe steal a few ideas here and there and build on them for their own crazy projects. That's why I'm continuing in this "Backstage blog" to share transparently such numbers.

Thank you

To all of you who have been a part in this journey this is a great moment for me to say once again:

A big thank you for your support! I really appreciate it a lot.

Writing and sharing knowledge is a very solitary work, and through your interactions, you're making it visible to me that it has not just value for me, but also for other people just like you who come from all around the world.

Thank you to all of you who joined a course!

Thank you to all of you who bought something from me to support me to continue to create a ton of content!

Thank you to all of you who shared how the courses, tools, templates have helped them and giving me motivation boosts!

Thank you to my friends and family members who support me on this crazy little adventure.

Will I continue?

So these are the first 5 years of running the Swiss Innovation Academy. Where the goal was for me to have two things:

• A place where I could teach (as back then I wasn't a teacher yet)

• A centralized place to store and share all my knowledge

In these five years, this website has done exactly that for me and even more. I feel that in some part, the fact that I had this website helped me to get the teaching gigs that I always dreamed of having.

I feel that because of this website, and all the people that made it alive, I have also today opportunities like being the interim co-lead for the master Service Design of the HSLU (the university where I first learned about Service Design). Which is a huge honor.

So yes! I'm very excited to continue this adventure for five more years!