To learn, a student must take new information and process it in a way that relates it to what is already known, and in the process form a newer, deeper understanding of the material. Just as learning involves changing one’s understanding of concepts and ideas over time, your edtech company and its products must also be subjected to ongoing scrutiny, evaluation, and change. It is necessary to recheck policies and practices upon which your products are based, and continually strive to make improvements.

Constantly improving

The Japanese have a philosophy of continuous quality improvement called “kaizen,” which they apply to many areas of their lives. Kaizen is the idea that one does not need to wait for something to be broken to fix it. Rather, one should always look for opportunities to improve upon current processes, making things incrementally better as time passes. This drive for continuous improvement should apply to your edtech company; you need to constantly be striving to make things better, reevaluating how you do things, looking at the results you are achieving, and taking steps to improve things incrementally.

In the same way that kaizen theory speaks to improving life in general, you should apply the concept to your entire company, no exemptions. You must consider ways in which your company can and should grow, change, and continuously improve in ways to best serve our children. For the world to continue to progress toward a knowledge-based society, it is necessary to reinvent and streamline our edtech products to enable the development and assimilation of information as knowledge.

Our schools are the primary institutions to facilitate the transference and conversion of information into students’ knowledge base. We must keep a watchful eye on the quality of the products that we provide to schools and to change our policies and practices to ensure improvement.

Reform, or consistent improvements?

Our children are performing poorly compared to other developed countries. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are performing even worse. Whether you believe that continuous improvement is good for your edtech company or not, what is certain is that our educational system needs products that help students be successful. Rather than asking for more time when the numbers don’t work in our favor, always striving for improvement and never letting our edtech companies become too comfortable is a better route to success.