I've always thought of EdTech as a tripod with three equally important legs. When you look at the failures of EdTech ventures, it's usually obvious which leg gave out. Universities with impeccable credentials produce great technologies that are not commercially viable.
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| When it all works as it should |
Venture capitalists pour money into can't-miss start-ups that leverage the latest tech only to find the education market a far tougher nut than they expected. Or a great business full of true educators will limp along with inefficient systems, bungling the user experience with disjointed or out-of-date technology. Why is it so hard to get all three working in sync? I think the answer is more sociological than logical. The three tribes speak different languages, have different cultures, and chase different goals. And they just don't trust one another.
When business and tech are joined at the hip, they often see the whole educational system as a morass of groupthink without practical, real-world foundations. Where education and technology live together in wedded bliss, the business world can be viewed as a shark tank full of mercenaries who will sell out their own mothers for one more positive earnings report. When education and business are deeply aligned, they can easily view technology as an incomprehensible whirlpool of change for the sake of change, coming with high risk, high cost, and dubious reward.
When you start looking at the differences among the three in terms of culture, vocabulary, and ideals, it's a wonder any EdTech venture survives. And it's no wonder that those who successfully align all three find great success.
It's easy to get like-minded people to collaborate, but breaking down the barriers between suspicous tribes so that they truly begin to listen, to speak openly, to solve problems together? That's hard work. It requires commitment, patience, and empathy, and creativity. I once solved this in a course development crunch by putting one member (at least) of each tribe onto a course development team, then giving each of them full authority in their own area of expertise, and veto power over every decision. Anyone could call a halt. Resolving disagreements required actually listening, learning about others' concerns, and coming up with solutions that worked for all.
But that was just a structural solution. It didn't address the underlying distrust. For that, we had to find a common ideal, a flag around which all could rally. And we found one: Every student is also a customer and an end-user. To be truly student-centric, we needed serve all three. A happy end-user needs reliable and suitable technology. A satisfied customer needs to have a great experience and receive value. And a successful student needs to learn and grow and find practical applications without the hassle of user and customer issues. It takes a team of experts working together to deliver on all three.
We created 10 teams and developed a full master's degree program in just a few months. The product was a huge success. Four of the teams worked smoothly, exactly as hoped. Three of the teams failed at some level and had to be reconstituted. And three of the teams succeeded so thoroughly that they became lifelong friends who wanted all their children to grow up and fall in love and marry one another. Okay, I made that last part up, but the truth isn't vastly different.
This "EdTech Tripod" principle holds whether you're creating a company, developing product, building software, reengineering processes, downsizing, or scaling up. If you're in EdTech you need the full Tripod in place and operating smoothly.
Questions? Thoughts? Let me know! I speak all three languages fluently (plus a little French).
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