Reverse Innovation in Education

In an age of AI, educators are challenged to think about the future of education and the role that the hallowed halls of academia play in a technology-driven world.

It is natural to think of technology as a tool to complement education because of its potential to scale products and services globally. Many have claimed to close learning and poverty gaps through education technology. However, a closer look at the numbers, say otherwise.

In 2021, Forbes capped the global EdTech market at $106B. In the same year, the World Bank sounded off a global learning crisis that exacerbated existing problems of inclusivity and equity in education as a result of the pandemic.

The Learning Crisis Affects the Poorest

UNICEF reported that in 2023, two-thirds of 10 year olds all over the world cannot read simple texts. This number even grows higher for developing countries with much larger populations who live below the poverty line.

For example, in the Philippines — which ranks 69th on the Global Hunger Index of 2022, almost 90% of students below age 10 cannot read their prescribed reading level. For countries lower in rank on the GHI such as Niger (115th spot), this percentage of children grows remarkably higher at 99% of students below the age of 10 cannot read.

Equity in Education NOW

In my experience working with education-serving startups and schools, Equity has always been used in the education space as a battlecry in business pitches, proposals and vision statements. However, I find that once the word Equity is said in a speech or written on paper, it often does not trickle down to communities that need it the most. As an educator, my biggest question now is — WHY?

Coming from the perspective of someone who grew up in a culture where education poverty (high drop-out rates, low literacy scores and insufficient quality teachers) is rampant, I have seen how more technology does not necessarily equate to better outcomes for students.

For schools in high-poverty countries such as the Philippines, there is almost always a slower pace of adoption of new technologies that primarily results from: a) no access to hardware (close to half of Filipino students in 2021 did not have devices for distance learning), b) a shrinking teacher workforce to support digital transformation and innovation and c) disconnected policies from experiences on the ground and insufficient financial support from government.

Reverse Innovation

It very much feels like there is a ticking time bomb waiting on educators — with a learning crisis on hand and the emergence of technologies such as AI — industries look to the education industry to innovate rapidly in order to meet the demands of the future workforce.

I believe that Reverse Innovation, a term coined in a Harvard Business Review article on General Electric in 2009 by Jeffrey Immelt, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Timble, is a good strategy to adopt for designers and innovators seeking to solve fundamental education problems.

Reverse Innovation shifts the perspective of the innovation process from the view of developed to developing or low-income economies. In this process, innovators are forced to design solutions for emerging markets, and thereby making the innovation process in iteslf equitable, by virtue of proximity. In another HBS article on the same topic, Prof. Vijay Govindarajan and Prof. Amos Winter state that “the constraints of developing countries usually force technological breakthroughs“.

Without a key understanding of gaps in the current system that invigorated the current learning crisis, I fear designers will not be able to maximize the potential of technology and launch to market, long-term solutions that solve root cause problems in education to make education equitable and accessible.

The time to act for educators is now. Many say education is ripe for disruption, as evidenced by the accelerated digital transformation the education industry experienced as a result of school closures in the COVID-19 pandemic. If we miss this window to disrupt the industry, it may be too late to meet the demands of a future workforce that requires holistic talents to utilize and control AI; and resist rampant misinformation and distrust in democratic institutions.