An Introduction: The Beginning of Lix

About 4 years ago, I read a great book about innovation theories. It changed my understanding of what innovation really is — to its core.

The key principal of the book was that humans live their everyday life based on about 80% habits. A habit develops when you do the same thing over and over and over again. You don’t even realize that you’re doing it automatically.

This happens because your brain is damn lazy.

Your brain prefers not to work, so it creates a path from where it has been before. The more you walk that same path, the more anchored it gets. Your brain allows itself to snooze and be a lazy ass. This prevents you from moving in new directions, getting new ideas or feeling creative.

Break the habits! Like Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Drive a different way to school, try out a new course, start painting, or travel somewhere. Your brain will become wide awake and start adding new information to what you already know.

New paths are created. This is where ideas arise, and Lix too.

The trigger point

I’ve always been interested in technology and software. Also, I’ve always known that I wanted to start something myself. For whatever reason, I ignored both parts at the age of 19 and started studying Economics.

Walking from lecture to lecture and in and out of exams, I carried my textbooks with me. It didn’t take long before I got sick of dragging around those heavy, expensive, and unmanageable paper chunks.

I wanted to compress all of my textbooks into my computer. At the same time, I wanted to interact with the books and do things like search and find what I needed in just a second. Last but not least, I absolutely didn’t want to have to pay that much money for my textbooks, saying goodbye to another trip to Italy every single semester.

Out of my frustration, the idea of Lix grew. So, I dropped out to give Lix a shot.

A lot has happened since then and the one-woman show is now a team performance, fighting passionately to create new trails for students worldwide.

First base down, a gazillion bases to go

The Lix team is on a mission to optimise and tailor learning to each person, so everyone can learn in ways that work best for them.

Textbooks are the baseline of learning, so that’s where we’ve started. But working with textbook publishers and providing a workspace for students is just the beginning.

We don’t plan on colonising Mars, but we’re thinking big.

Imagine yourself looking for a specific theory in your 3 marketing books. How long does it take you to flip through 3 print books compared to searching across all of them at once on your computer or tablet? How about highlighting in different colors and skimming through the overview of them when looking for a specific description?

I had about 3 highlighters for each of my courses. One for exam notes, another for good-to-know phrases, a third for brilliant quotes.

What about indexing highlights and notes and tagging their colors so it’s possible to tell one from another? Not to mention: study group collaboration, automatic citation and reference lists, following notes from the ultra-nerd in your class, audio version to listen to on the bus or in the plane, and virtual reality classes at the top of Mount Everest.

Maybe I lost you by now.

Not trying to sell a product here, by dropping random features. But there are SO many ideas to bring to life, that will keep changing the game of learning. Students worldwide will save a serious amount of time — time to focus on assignments instead of spending hours searching and transcribing a 2-hour interview.

Again, this is just the beginning.

Imagine some years from now, when you log into your study workspace: ”Welcome back! If you finish the recommended tasks in your workspace today, you are on your way to an A at your exam 36 days from now. Estimated time to finish today: 92 minutes.”

Your study workspace will contain anything from textbooks to videos, games, augmented reality, or something completely different. No matter the format, it’ll be tailored to your learning path.

I’m so excited to see what the Lix team will accomplish. You’ve now been introduced to what Lix is all about and where it’s headed.

If breaking your habits builds new ideas for studying, feel free to share them with us. Anytime.