A social phenomenon known as ‘Not Invented Here Syndrome’ is a serious cause of stagnation within educational companies globally. This is the tribalistic belief that tools developed in-house are inherently better in every way than those created elsewhere. In the case of online learning, this is demonstrably false.

Many educational companies are developing tools from the ground up that have already been created elsewhere. As a result, the process of building learning products becomes unnecessarily costly, it takes longer, and innovation slows down. In short, reinventing the wheel is a colossal, illogical waste of resources. If everyone in the industry built upon ubiquitous infrastructure, they could develop platforms faster and to a higher standard. We only need to look at some of the most successful and innovative platforms in recent memory – Spotify, Airbnb and Uber – to see how revolutionary the API-ification of an industry can be. It’s time that educators practiced what they preach and learned how to do something new.

By overcoming this mental block, online educational platforms can stop building from the ground up and instead stand on the shoulders of giants in order to raise education into exciting new heights.