Khan Academy - A revolution of sorts

What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Henri Amiel, the philosopher and poet, who died in the 18th century, would be very happy if he was here now. His words have been given life by another giant of this century - Salman Khan.  A graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, Khan had been tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. This small embryo blossomed into a revolution when Khan finally quit his job as a hedge fund manager and decided to focus on this full time. It started the revolution called Khan Academy.

The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy is a Non-profit Organization now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Khan Academy has eclipsed MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) in terms of videos viewed—its YouTube channel has over 150 million total views, compared to MIT's 38 million. It also has twice as many subscribers, at more than 320,000.

A Youtube clipping of one of the lessons from Khan Academy:

The story of Khan’s academy is one of inspiration, greatness and a genuine desire to help society. But this story also contains many important management learnings. In this blog, I try to explore some of these learnings.

1)  Sense Ideas: There is a successful business model hidden under every small idea. Khan’s real success was in identifying the opportunity of teaching and making it available for the millions of users worldwide. Quite often we fail to identify these opportunities. Sometimes we may not be able to develop it into the scale that it truly deserves. One should not limit themselves during the process of goal setting. Remember the goal setting exercise: http://nitieim19poma011.blogspot.in/2012/06/mera-tower-sub-se-voonchaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.html that we did in class? We need to set a very high goal for ourselves in any venture we start. At the same time it is important to communicate a realistic goal to stake holders and try to over-achieve the target.

2)  Innovation: Innovate or die. Look at Apple. Look at Google. Every top company will have a story or two to talk about innovation. Khan’s academy is a perfect example of how we can innovate in even the smallest of things. What started as a collection of youtube videos is now a complete teaching platform. Practice exercises. Self-paced learning. Concept of badges etc are amazing pieces of innovation which must have played a big role in the success of this venture. Khan Academy as a whole is an amazing innovation in itself. A video of Microsoft CEO Summit Innovation in Education:

3)  Quality: Never compromise on quality even if it is a non-profit organization. The Khan academy gives detailed statistics of the studies. It is an amazing feature with top notch quality. Quite often, new and budding enterprises are torn between quality and practicality. Should we wait to increase the quality of the product or should we try to enter the market as soon as possible? A good mix is essential for a successful venture.

These are some of my observations regarding Khan Academy