Doing Something Different

In her article “The Call for Epochal Leadership” in Business Week, Shoshana Zuboff, retired professor of the Harvard Business School, describes how it takes new, industry-shifting leaders to enlighten and inspire us to adopt new beliefs and ways of looking at and doing things. Those new ways open up incredible possibilities. She mentioned that education is an area where consumers want to experience – need to experience – a new kind of renaissance or redefinition of how things are done, what they should cost, and where you get them.

To set the stage for this kind of transformation, Zuboff cites the example of the iPod and iTunes and the impact they had on the mass consumption of music….how they redefined a new model that completely shifts the relationship each of us has with music as a result.

In education, we at TutorVista.com have embarked on a journey to redefine where and how education services are delivered, and how much they should cost. Just like the Model T challenged notions of how vehicles should be made and that in turn led to a radical fractioning of the price resulting in affordable transportation for the masses, TutorVista believes that if you use technology to connect experienced, passionate tutors from around the world with students who need them, we can deliver better quality education, personalized service and convenience at a mass market price. Students talk naturally to a tutor a half-a-world away and write, draw and work on a shared virtual whiteboard – a kind of electronic piece of paper student and tutor share. We can provide unlimited tutoring, homework help, remediation and quiz preparation for a low, fixed price. This fundamentally changes education. It’s now more personal, available, accessible, convenient, affordable and timely.

But it isn’t enough that the light has been shined on a powerfully enabling global system of new possibilities. There are old, entrenched systems in place that are out to assert the status quo at every turn and undermine innovation and a more efficient new order. Look at supplemental education services. Instead of encouraging new models that will bring more and better help to students where and when they need it most, rules designed to ensure the same people are the only ones in the game doing the same things they always have serve to stifle innovation and lash us to the mast of the past, long after that ship has sunk.

It’s essential we break the molds that doom us to the ways of the past. Repeating that past isn’t going to do us any good. We need to do something different!

Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com