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The Customer

Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) is a global leader in learning innovation, dedicated to developing the next generation of business leaders. One of its standout offerings, HBR Spark, features “Leadership Labs”—immersive, scenario-based practice activities designed to build real-world leadership and management capabilities.

Under the leadership of Jennifer Long, Director of Learning Experience Design, HBP is constantly pushing the boundaries of learner engagement, aiming to deliver personalized, scalable feedback. Recognizing AI’s transformative potential, the Learning Experience Design team turned to AirOps to help build internal AI expertise and accelerate their journey toward cutting-edge innovation.

The Problem

HBP wanted to enhance their learning experiences in HBR Spark through personalized, rubric-based feedback powered by AI. 

While the first pilot activities were promising, the process proved resource-intensive, and required extensive support from AirOps' solutions architects. This limited the HBP team's ability to rapidly self-sufficiently grow across additional learning scenarios and constrained their potential for innovation.

The key operational and skill-based challenges included:

• A considerable amount of time was needed, with initial AI-driven tasks taking several months to complete.
• The process depended on external support for workflow design, testing, and AI model optimization.
• There were also gaps in areas like AI prompting, rubric-based evaluation, and efficient workflow execution.

"Initially, creating a single learning activity took months. Introducing AirOps shortened our delivery time, but introduced the complexity of new workflows. We co-built with AirOps, but relied on their external technical expertise to scale and modify at critical junctions. We saw it as an opportunity to develop deeper internal capabilities." — Jennifer Long, Director, Learning Experience Design at Harvard Business Publishing

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The Solution

To support HBP’s internal team, AirOps provided a tailored AI program focused on their learning design needs. Through live workshops, hands-on training, and expert support, the HBP team quickly became skilled at independently creating, testing, and deploying advanced AI-powered learning experiences.

The targeted enablement program included:

• Three live training sessions covering prompt engineering, workflow building techniques, and best practices for quality assurance testing.
• Step-by-step guided sessions, where the team built AI workflows from scratch.
• Reusable workflow templates and a flexible architecture, allowing HBP to replicate workflows for new scenarios, from moderation to evaluation.
• Interactive sessions and office hours that addressed real-time questions, encouraging immediate practice and a deeper understanding.

Team participants particularly valued:

• Clear explanations of complex topics like dynamic inputs, conditional logic, and content evaluation.
• Opportunities to build and test workflows directly tied to their actual learning experiences.
• Expert guidance from AirOps Solution Engineer, Cindy, whose responsive support accelerated internal mastery.

"The training was hugely impactful—going 'soup-to-nuts' through our real workflows filled critical knowledge gaps. Cindy's deep expertise, structured sessions, and responsiveness transformed our team's capabilities."
— Jennifer Long, Director, Learning Experience Design at Harvard Business Publishing

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The Impact

With AirOps’ focused support, HBP sped up the process of incorporating AI-based feedback into their Spark learning experiences. The internal team now handles the design, development, and management of precision workflows on their own, reducing the need for outside help and driving innovation at scale.

Key measurable outcomes include:

• Faster Workflow Creation: Cut creation time from months to about 40 hours per interaction.
• Quick Innovation and Growth: Expanded from 1 pilot activity to over 6 AI-driven learning experiences in under 6 months.
• Stronger Internal Skills: Achieved 95% independence from external technical support, enabling rapid testing of new ideas.
• Improved Operational Efficiency: Freed up internal resources by removing bottlenecks caused by reliance on outside help.
• Confident Team Culture: Gave non-technical learning designers the confidence to prototype and innovate, tackling advanced projects like audio-based activities and conversational AI roleplays.

With strengthened internal AI expertise, HBP is well positioned to lead innovation in personalized and scalable learning experiences, and to deepen engagement in their learning products.

“The transformation was remarkable. Our team went from being heavily dependent on external expertise to becoming 95% self-sufficient. The structured training gave our learning designers the necessary skills to independently optimize and build workflows with confidence.” — Jennifer Long, Director, Learning Experience Design at Harvard Business Publishing

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Schedule an enablement strategy session today and discover how AirOps can help your organization build deep internal AI capabilities, accelerate innovation, and deliver transformative learning experiences.