Salman Khan (Khan), a US-based hedge fund analyst, discovered his passion for teaching in the early 2000s and quit his job at Connective Capital Management in 2009. He followed his dream of imparting education using an interactive, informal, colloquial, and gamified approach. Khan’s initiative of tutoring his cousin in mathematics online using the Yahoo Doodle notepad serendipitously resulted in the revolutionary concept of offering free-of-cost online lectures across the world. In the year 2009, Khan founded Khan Academy. The ‘messiah of math’ as Khan was referred to, offered the video lessons, primarily in mathematics and science to begin with, and extended in due course to other academic domains. What began as a casual hobby grew in less than a decade into an online education platform which reached 10 million students, with about 1000 million views, 5000 courses, and an army of 3,50,000 registered teachers. Khan Academy’s courses were made available in more than 30 global languages, thereby taking the $ 1 trillion global education industry by storm. Khan Academy received stupendous support – strategic as well as financial – from various corners. Capitalists with a philanthropic orientation from around the world were impressed by his motto ‘Anybody can learn anything’ and extended voluntary support to his grand vision of offering world class education to everybody free of cost. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Google, the O’Sullivan Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Carlos Slim Foundation, and AT&T were some of the global heavyweights who constantly backed Khan Academy and Khan’s intent and impeccable vision. This case study elaborates on Khan’s disruptive education platform, Khan Academy, which is creating waves in the academic circles.

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Issues

The case is structured to achieve the following teaching objectives:

	Appraises innovation as a prime competency of the entrepreneur.
	Formulates how innovation (in learning methods) can prove to be disruptive to the sector.
	Infers the 4 Ps of innovation (Product, Process, Position, and Paradigm), which have shaped Khan Academy from a mere tutorial to a potential world school..

Contents

Keywords

Khan Academy, Sal Khan, educational videos, Online education, entrepreneurship, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Innovation in Education, Education sector, Disruptive innovation

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