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If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.

Today, as computation and Internet technologies enable higher education to migrate online, MIT sees the opportunity to democratize education with unprecedented efficiency and scalability.
We possess a strong desire and feel a compelling obligation to offer a not-for-profit, mission-driven, open-technology approach to online learning. MITx is our contribution.

There is indeed a common trait in the typical way creative thinkers approach challenges: They can comfortably hold opposing thoughts in their heads and get to work.
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Successful creative thinkers see opposites and apparently contradicting goals not just as a potential for dissonance, but as an opportunity for dynamic harmony. To paraphrase one of Walt Whitman’s most famous verses “creative thinkers are vast, they contain multitudes.” And to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the mark of a truly intelligent person is the ability to still function while holding two, opposing ideas in their head.
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The truth lies in harnessing the positive tension between the extremes, and fine-tuning it until it resonates with what current technologies can enable and with what intended consumers and end-users are ready to adopt in a given sociocultural economic context.
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It’s an art that only a group of talented individuals have proven to be capable of mastering.