First of a 10 part series of 1 minute clips. Great overview or starting point for discussions.
Thanks to Rod Corbett for bringing this valuable resource to my attention.
How to Save the Traditional University, From the Inside Out – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring offer some salient points on how to save the traditional university. Their recommendations include:
- The people inside the higher education community are the best suited to decide what is best for the university.
- Not every university can be Harvard so institutions must find what they do best.
- Online and hybrid learning is a viable options many students are pursuing and expecting.
- Focus on undergraduate students rather than limited graduate students
- Less is move–cutting back on majors and programs will help an institution focus on what it does best.
The following statement provides the best perspective on what universities must do to survive:
make focused choices in three critical areas: the students it serves, the subjects it offers, and the scholarship it performs.
I have been reading Christensen’s work for many years now and I keep on going back to it time and time again because he states the obvious uses a common approach. This commentary really offers no new ideas but common sense that faculty, staff and especially university administrators should act on.
I find this statistic very interesting since Apple or Mac has never been considered and enterprise platform. Another interesting fact is how many people are bringing an iOS device like an iPad or iPhone into their work setting on their own. The notion of bringing your own device (BYOD) into an enterprise setting was not even considered two to three years ago. I think it will be safe to speculate that BYOD will not only be the primary model with mobile devices in the business setting but also in Education. I can speak first hand with respect to the plans at ACU and the BYOD model will more than likely be the dominant model in 2012.
Is the iPad going to be another classic example of disruptive innovation for the PC in the same way that the PC disrupted the mainframe and mini computer market? It sure seems to be on the right track. The iPad doesn’t offer all the power and functionality of the PC but what it does offer is enough to make people want to use the device in similar yet different ways than the PC. You have the incumbent market leaders (Microsoft, HP, Dell etc.) downplaying the significance of the iPad yet at the same time trying to compete by offering inferior products that don’t really match the power and uniqueness of the iPad.
The PC disruption took many years to really change the landscape of computing but we didn’t have the Internet, social networking and social media that we have today so the accelerated pace that we are seeing with the iPad disruption should not be a surprise. The accelerated pace of disruptive innovation will continue to grow because we are moving from a push to a pull economy. When you consider the millions of apps in the App Store, Apples continued exploitation of the mobile market that it grew with the iPhone, mobility and the mobile market place that Apple created is poised to knock off more than just the likes of Microsoft.
