Can Japan Keep Pace with the Rapidly Changing Global Education Landscape Driven by MOOCs and EdTech? ~ Masayuki Watanabe, CEO of Quipper

Terms like MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and EdTech (a portmanteau of "education" and "technology") are gaining attention, fueling high expectations that the internet and digital technology will significantly transform education. In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shocked the education world by announcing it would freely distribute its courses online worldwide. Fourteen years later, anyone can now take courses from the world's top universities online—a commonplace reality. This time, we spoke with Masayuki Watanabe, founder of "Quipper School," an educational service experiencing rapid user growth globally, particularly in developing countries.
(Interviewer: Yuzo Ono, Planning Promotion Department Manager, Dentsu Digital Inc.)

I intuitively sensed that the iPhone revolution could transform global education

──After graduating from university, you've had diverse experiences: new service development at McKinsey and DeNA, then starting your own business. How did you perceive the internet during that journey?

Watanabe: My own interests and strengths have consistently been more in new services and new businesses than in the internet itself. But you can't talk about that without mentioning the internet. Especially when creating something entirely new as a venture, the internet is always involved. I'm not an engineer myself; I'm the type who thinks about how to utilize the internet. I suspect I'm among the last of a generation that thinks that way. Ventures have changed dramatically in the last three or four years; today's entrepreneurs are predominantly also engineers. Compared to the past, coding and languages are simpler, and you can easily launch services using cloud servers. People who can write code themselves, produce, and respond to market feedback are leading projects. How small a team you can start with is crucial, and managers like me, who just handle planning, are becoming a minority.

──That's the often-mentioned "Lean Startup" approach, right?

Watanabe: But education is a different story. Precisely because it's so critical to life, there's no field less suited to Lean Startup. For example, if you invest time in a study method for university entrance exams, you can't just start over. If that method is wrong, you're in trouble, and no one wants to be a guinea pig. Furthermore, once students pass the exam, they never return. Every service recipient is a beginner. Therefore, the lean startup approach won't work. You must prepare the most comprehensive, highest-quality content, take time to build a fanbase, earn the trust of the teaching side, and operate within a timeframe where results appear a year later. Whether it's elementary school, junior high, or vocational training, significant time investment is required. Additionally, the service must be evaluated by people who lack discernment about its value, making it an extremely challenging field.

──Why did you deliberately choose the education sector, which is so fraught with difficulties?

Watanabe: I didn't realize that until I actually started (laughs). But what led me to choose education was volunteering in a refugee camp during my student days. I saw firsthand how incredibly difficult it is for someone born there to ever leave the camp and achieve a happy life. While wealth gaps can be managed up to a certain point, falling below that line makes it impossible to overcome through personal effort alone. Japan is incredibly fortunate. For example, I'm from the countryside in Fukushima. I respected my school teachers, and though my family wasn't wealthy, I could advance to university through diligent study. It's a tremendous privilege to be able to choose what you want to do, not just in terms of education. Many people around the world don't have that opportunity. Since then, this sense of urgency has always been at the core of my thinking.

That said, after joining McKinsey—a company like the hallowed halls of capitalism—I temporarily forgot about it. But back in 2008, while working at DeNA, the iPhone's arrival made me feel something huge was happening, and that sense of urgency came flooding back. Even in developing countries, 70-80% of people have mobile phones. If devices like the iPhone became widespread and educational content could be delivered to them, it might fundamentally solve poverty issues. I intuitively felt that the combination of screen size, app-based service delivery, high-speed 3G connectivity, and the ability for people to connect, evaluate, and encourage each other through SNS would profoundly change the world.

The uniqueness of "Quipper School" as a service for teachers, not students

—So that's why you left DeNA, moved to the UK, and started Quipper.

Watanabe: Once we actually started working on it, we encountered challenges we could only understand by doing it, hitting walls repeatedly. First, no matter how wonderful the vision, people just don't study that much—they're fundamentally lazy (laughs). They get excited when they decide to do it, but that doesn't last. We tried adding game elements, but it ended up feeling more like trivia than studying, straying from what we wanted to achieve. Collaborating with existing OEM-like services also proved difficult.

However, about a year and a half ago, we launched a service that took off completely differently from anything before, and we finally felt traction. People who started didn't drop out, and it spread rapidly through word of mouth. It grew organically, so we didn't need marketing costs. That service is "Quipper School." It took us about four years from founding the company to reach this point.

──Could you explain the features of "Quipper School" again? It has a uniqueness not found in other online education services.

Watanabe: We digitize every process related to "homework" and provide it to teachers alongside the content. While typical education services target students, our focus on teachers is distinctive. Every country has homework, but it's still done the old-fashioned way: printing and distributing paper worksheets. This is incredibly labor-intensive—creating problems, printing them, grading them, and individually recording results all add significant post-workload. In the classroom, just distributing and collecting printouts takes about 5 minutes. That means 10% of a 50-minute class period is lost.

Quipper School creates and provides sets of lessons and problems aligned with each country's curriculum, designed for use during class for assignments or prep work. Teachers can instantly distribute and collect homework for students, prompt submissions, and even involve parents.

By focusing on the clear-cut value of reducing teachers' operational workload and committing to offering it free of charge, the service has grown explosively. Although it hasn't even been a full year since the service was seriously rolled out, it now has around 500,000 monthly active users. We're targeting 4 to 5 million users next year. Once teachers try this service, they find it so convenient they can't stop using it. And students keep using "Quipper School" regardless of motivation—because it's their homework (laugh).

We're also developing monetizable add-ons. For instance, since we can pinpoint where a student is struggling, we'll soon launch services like tailored tutoring, diagnostic mock exams, and even a paid model where teachers create their own content to sell to other teachers.

For countries where infrastructure or other factors currently prevent monetization, we'll continue offering it free for now and patiently wait for the right time. It's actually being used in a village of volcanic refugees in the Philippines, which is exactly what I originally dreamed of.

New Possibilities for Monetizing Education by Connecting with the Talent Industry

──Flipped learning is gaining attention. It reverses the traditional school-home learning model: students use the internet at home to watch lessons, while school focuses on solving problems or forming teams to work on projects. Do you think this approach will take root?

Watanabe: I believe it will take root. Fundamentally, learning methods should be tailored to each individual, and I think the traditional educational model has reached its limits. However, the field of education is very conservative, so it will take time, and ultimately, the teachers will be the key. Regarding flipped learning, it requires having students prepare beforehand, grouping them based on their level of understanding, and then providing tailored instruction. This demands coaching skills entirely different from traditional teaching methods, and it's not something anyone can easily do right away. Change will likely come gradually as more experience is gained.

──There's also the expectation that internet-based learning will promote lifelong learning beyond just school, right?

Watanabe: Concepts like grade levels and textbooks are based on the premise of compulsory education, where around 40 students are placed in one classroom and taught by a teacher. But fundamentally, students themselves should be able to choose their textbooks and study different subjects at any age. Age restrictions are nonsensical. The system feels exhausted by the idea that you must learn certain things by a certain age, and failing to do so makes learning boring and leads to failure. Learning will become much freer. Of course, gathering in one place for debates or group work is crucial for character development and should continue. But at the same time, rescuing those who become lost or disengaged is the true essence of EdTech.

──Adaptive learning, which tailors instruction to each individual, is also discussed. Is this connected to the current focus on big data and similar trends?

Watanabe: In principle, it's possible, but it's not that simple. Even if students make the same mistake, what they don't understand differs from person to person. Teachers intuitively discern this and respond naturally, but it's not something that just pops up from statistical analysis of learning logs. Adaptive learning means "perfectly tailored learning" for the individual, so there are various approaches, and big data is just one of them.

── On the other hand, it's also pointed out that companies could use an individual's learning history to recruit the talent they need. What are your thoughts?

Watanabe: I see tremendous potential there. Individuals who study diligently, consistently complete assignments even if their academic scores aren't outstanding, or demonstrate steady effort can become highly attractive candidates for companies. By accurately evaluating and presenting learning behaviors and habits, companies can move beyond relying solely on one-shot interviews or exams for hiring. I see great potential in a business model that closely links education and employment for monetization. This could involve not charging during the actual learning phase, but recovering costs at the exit point—such as employment, certification, or even through scholarships after employment. LinkedIn's recent acquisition of EdTech company Lynda for $1.5 billion is part of this trend.

──Quipper provides detailed, individualized services targeting teachers. Looking at currently popular MOOC services, the mainstream model involves renowned professors from universities like Harvard or MIT delivering lectures globally on a large scale.

Watanabe: We're currently in a phase where global EdTech players are working hard to build models over several years. One pioneering approach is streaming lectures by famous university professors online. This approach is easy to understand and has successfully grown user bases. However, as a major industry-wide trend, both the breadth of content targeted and the functionality of services are expanding. Consequently, the substance and target audiences of leading services are gradually overlapping. Ultimately, EdTech services are built around several core functionalities. As each service evolves, their forms naturally become more similar. In other words, it's certain that services will engage in an all-out brawl in the global market. Quipper aims to rise to the top in that tournament.

Will technology transform education, and will Japan be overtaken by emerging nations?

──The internet poses a threat to existing industries in various fields. Is that also true for education?

Watanabe: That's a possibility. For example, if there's a teacher who can teach a particular subject best, students could just listen to that teacher online. In an extreme case, other teachers might become unnecessary. So, in the long run, the entire industrial structure of education will change. However, people cannot learn endlessly alone facing a tablet; they need support. Teachers will also need new skills, such as guiding children in what to choose, how to design their careers, and sustaining their efforts toward their chosen paths. This change won't happen overnight; it will progress gradually. The word "lesson" (授業) is written as "授ける" (to impart a livelihood). The idea of imparting knowledge is outdated. What's needed is coaching. As human resources become increasingly vital, including in emerging nations, I believe more careful human development will directly contribute to a nation's competitiveness.

──In your contribution to Harvard Business Review magazine, you pointed out that the rigidity of "school education settings" prevents us from benefiting from "the rapidly evolving EdTech advancing globally," warning this could lead to a decline in national strength. Indeed, even the poorest countries can now access lectures from prestigious Western universities for free, provided they have internet access. You express a profound sense of crisis that if this trend continues, Japan risks being left behind.

Watanabe: I feel this is indeed happening. Emerging nations everywhere view education as a major challenge and are aggressively trialing solutions, leading to the emergence of various players and services. I sense competition expanding at a furious pace, and we're seeing actual results at the national level where countries are successfully improving academic performance. Quipper School, for instance, has been officially adopted by education boards in over 10 administrative regions in the Philippines, with movements underway to implement it across all schools within those districts.

In contrast, Japan is cautious—for better or worse—and confident in its established educational system. However, when I consider whether we can truly compete in the global talent market ten years from now, when emerging nations produce highly educated talent through new approaches, I feel a sense of crisis. Perhaps powerful private companies advancing new educational models and disruptive pricing could drive change.

──How will the internet and digital advancements shape the future of education, society, and even the very nature of schools and universities?

Watanabe: A society where everything is crammed into the 18 years before university entrance exams determine your path, which then dictates your lifetime income, is uninspiring. I believe education will become much freer. Advances in robotics will shorten working hours, and new ways to enjoy leisure time will emerge. Within this context, the nature of schools will inevitably change. We should utilize technology to move toward a more free and diverse direction, coaching students according to their individual situations on things they need to learn collectively for entering society, such as consensus-building in discussions. It would be great if the world moved in that direction, regardless of wealth.

──That means there's a possibility Japan could fall further behind.

Watanabe: It's not exactly shock therapy, but if that truly happened, Japan would probably unite and start taking action seriously to make a comeback. Conversely, without some kind of impact, there might be no catalyst for change. Precisely because I've benefited from Japan's education system, I have an attachment to it and am grateful to my parents and my country. That's why, not necessarily as a way to repay the favor, but before Japan gets left behind, I want to take on various initiatives and speak out. At Quipper, we're currently recruiting talent worldwide, especially engineers. If you think you're the one, we'd love for you to jump right in.
( https://www.wantedly.com/companies/quipper?ql=gaJpZM4ACetM )