Word: wegelius
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When Sweden announced that it would grant fewer than a dozen digital television licenses, the government got some 63 applications. Among the well-established TV operators and technology titans were two women: Annie Wegelius, 42, who founded and sold a leading Scandinavian TV production company, and her friend Maria Borelius, 41, a biologist who had produced and presented popular science programs on TV. At the time, they had no financial backing and no business plan. "All we had was a big idea, says Wegelius...
...Their vision was to link e-learning and digital TV. The two dreamed up an action plan at her kitchen table one weekend in January of 1998. "We were going into an election in Sweden and there was a public debate about the failure of the school system," Wegelius says. "We thought, what if we could take the storytelling powers of the media world and marry that with the best academic content using new interactive digital technology - take Hollywood and Stanford and move them to Silicon Valley? Maybe we could create a completely new learning environment...
...target market is people who want intellectual stimulation. Wegelius figures that 60% of Europeans are interested in lifelong learning. Here's how it works. One recent segment called Beat Lab concentrated on teaching people how to become pop stars. A series of 10 half-hour TV shows included discussions with popular groups such as Ace of Base about how they got started. The Kworld.se website offered a Beat Lab corner where people could chat online with artists, get resource material and link to music companies. The website sold a CD-ROM 10-part music course, which went from...
...Wegelius and Borelius want to take K-World Europe-wide and are in talks with cable and terrestrial TV operators in several European countries. They are also thinking about expanding into Asia, then perhaps...
...pair want to establish K-World as a global lifelong learning brand. As Wegelius says: "Nobody else has attempted to do it." Having beaten the odds before, she and Borelius aren't worried about them...