reinvent

Some critical skills to have and methodologies to understand

On 11/13/2014, in 21st century, career development, change, Daniel S. Christian, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, history, ideas, leadership, lifelong learning, pace of change, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, by Daniel Christian

Introduction (emphasis DSC)

Futures Studies as it has evolved since the early 1970s is both a discipline and a meta-discipline. It is a set of skills and applied methodologies that can be learned—in impressively diverse ways—and it is a dynamic way of coming to understand the world that is practical and empowering. As Alvin Toffler wrote in 1974, “A focus on the future is relevant to all learners, regardless of age.”

For this special report, we called for essays from futurists who have experienced futures education, be it in a K-12 class project, a professional certificate program, a workshop, or a full degree program. We received an overwhelming response from students, educators, and several people who have been on both sides of the learning and teaching experience.

We hope readers will continue to share their experiences with us—and with tomorrow’s futures learners.

—THE EDITORS

From DSC:
I can’t stress enough the importance of helping students learn more about how to see what might be coming down the pike — to be able to pulse check a variety of environments. This is not “fluff”, gazing into a crystal ball, or pie-in-the-sky type of thinking. There are numerous techniques being used within futurism today*, with real and practical applications.

For me, futures studies have strong ties in with developing strategy and vision as well as identifying opportunities and threats.

Students need access to many more of these *futures studies* programs! (teachthefuture.org may be helpful here). We can’t start building these programs out too soon. Enrollments should be strong once people understand how helpful and practical these skills and methodologies can be. In fact, given the exponential pace we are currently experiencing, these skills become critical not only for corporations/businesses and for higher education, but for individuals as well — especially seeing as more of us are becoming contingent workers (freelancers, independent professionals, temporary contract workers, independent contractors or consultants).

When we’re moving at 180 mph, we can’t be looking at the front of our hoods. We need to be scanning the horizons.

* As Haven Allahar stated in the item “Futures Education in the Caribbean”:

…the common techniques utilized in the practice of futuring:

Scanning.
DEGEST (demography, economics, governance, environment, society, technology).
Trend analysis.
Scenarios.
Delphi polling.
Modeling.
Simulation and games.
Brainstorming.
Visioning.
Anticipating wild cards.

Finding New Business Models in Unsettled Times — from Educause.com by Paul J. LeBlanc
If the core crisis in higher education is one of sustainability, being focused on the job to be done and having a grasp of the forces shaping higher education gives institutional leaders a new way to think about recasting their future.

Excerpts:

“What to do?” is the question that so many college and university presidents struggle with right now. We seem to be sitting at the heart of a perfect storm where a lot of things are happening faster than our ability to predict and strategize. We can respond to this stormy weather as medieval farmers did to the next day’s weather: by simply waiting to see what arrives and then taking action, often inadequately. Or we can recognize that we actually have the tools, the technology, and the know-how to reinvent U.S. higher education in ways that will address its current failings.

…

Those established entities that survive are able to harness the innovations and rethink their business models to better serve their customers. Those that eventually disappear typically adopted one of two strategies: (1) hunker down and hope to ride out the storm by doing more of the same; or (2) try a little of everything. Neither strategy works very well, and as a result, once-great and seemingly unassailable companies have disappeared or, at best, survived as mere shadows of themselves. That’s the scenario that many current critics of traditional higher education posit and even welcome, often pointing to other industries that have seen enormous disruption—music, publishing, journalism, and retailing—to presage the impending doom for traditional higher education.

…

But there is no one higher education to reinvent, and colleges and universities do no one job. Higher education encompasses the following purposes:

A coming-of-age higher education that meets the needs of recent high school graduates, usually providing a purposeful living/learning community that provides ample opportunities for self-discovery and growing up
A workforce-development higher education that focuses on working adults and that provides job and career opportunities while creating a talent pipeline for employers in a local economy
A research higher education that seeks to add to the store of human knowledge, creating breakthrough, innovative solutions to a wide range of problems
A status higher education that provides a value-added network of peers, as well as access to and maintenance of privilege and social status
A civic-good higher education that works to produce a more just and responsible society
A cultural-improvement higher education that creates and/or supports the arts and humanities and instills in its graduates the taste and refinement to support and appreciate the arts

…

The need to reinvent underlying business models is increasingly urgent.

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Other items from Educause:

Flexible Option: A Direct-Assessment Competency-Based Education Model
The University of Wisconsin Flexible Option CBE model focuses on assessment rather than credit hours, letting students undertake academic work at their own pace and prove mastery of required knowledge and skills through rigorous assessments.

A Tuition-Free College Degree (EDUCAUSE Review) — by Shai Reshef

Excerpt:

First, brick-and-mortar institutions have expenses that virtual universities do not. So we don’t need to pass these expenses on to our students. We also don’t need to worry about capacity. There are no limits on the number of seats in a virtual university: nobody needs to stand at the back of the lecture hall. In addition, through the use of open educational resources and through the generosity of professors who are willing to make their materials accessible and available for free, our students do not need to buy textbooks. Even professors, the most expensive line in any university balance sheet, come free to our students. More than 3,000 higher education professionals—including presidents, vice chancellors, and academic advisors from top colleges and universities such as NYU, Yale, Berkeley, and Oxford—are on-board to help our students. Finally, we believe in peer-to-peer learning. We use this sound pedagogical model to encourage our students from all over the world to interact and to study together and also to reduce the time required from professors for class assignments.

…

Five years ago, University of the People was a vision. Today, it is a reality. In February 2014, we were awarded the ultimate academic endorsement of our model: University of the People is now fully accredited. With this accreditation, it is time for us to scale up. We have demonstrated that our model works. I now invite colleges and universities and, even more important, the governments of developing countries to replicate this model to ensure that the gates to higher education will open ever more widely. A new era is coming—an era that will witness the disruption of the current model of higher education, changing the model from one that is a privilege for the few to one that is a basic right, affordable and accessible for all.

See:

https://www.uopeople.edu/programs/online-bachelor-degree-programs/

Beyond the MOOC Model: Changing Educational Paradigms — by James G. Mazoue
Four trends – MOOC-based degrees, competency-based education, the formalization of learning, and regulatory reform – are shifting educational practice away from core tenets of traditional education, indicating not a transient phenomenon but rather a fundamental change to the status quo.

Excerpt:

According to Georgia Tech’s recent survey, initial reviews from the first cohort of OMS CS students are positive: 93 percent recommend the program to others and nearly two-thirds said their experience exceeds their expectations. If data from the OMS CS show that MOOC-based degrees are viable, others will follow with an array of offerings that will compete directly with on-campus programs.

Some may quibble that the $6,600 OMS CS is not modeled on real MOOCs because of its price tag. However, this misses the larger point: namely, that a quality online degree offered at scale for a nominal or greatly reduced cost is a more attractive alternative for many students than an on-campus degree. In deference to purists who might balk at calling a degree program that charges tuition a MOOC, we can call it a MOD (for Massive Online Degree). Whatever we call it, it will be bad news for on-campus degree programs. With competition, we can expect a MOD’s cost to go down; it is not unreasonable to think that it might go down to a negligible amount if cost recovery shifts from charging students for the acquisition of knowledge to a model based on learning assessment and credentialing. In the end, students — if we let them — will be the ones who decide whether a MOD’s value outweighs the additional cost of an on-campus degree.

…

Far from fading into oblivion, data show that MOOCs are in fact increasing in global popularity. The case for dismissing MOOCs as an educational alternative, therefore, has yet to be made.

The University of Texas System makes bold move into competency-based education — from utsystem.edu

Excerpt:

AUSTIN – The University of Texas System will be the first in the nation to launch a personalized, competency-based education program system-wide aimed at learners from high school through post-graduate studies.

What sets the UT System approach apart from other competency-based programs is a focus on offering personalized and adaptive degrees and certificates that are industry-aligned and – via technology developed by the UT System – can systematically improve success, access and completion rates in areas of high employment demand.

“Competency-based programs allow students to advance through courses, certifications and degrees based on their ability to master knowledge and skills rather than time spent in a classroom,” said Chancellor Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D. “All students are held to clearly defined and rigorous expectations, but each follows a customized path to success that responds and adapts based on individual learning strengths, challenges and goals. And students can earn credit for prior learning and move at their own speed.”

…

To support and power its new competency-based educational pathway, the UT System is working with education technology innovators to create a state-of-the-art, “mobile-first” stack of technologies and services called TEx, which stands for Total Educational Experience.

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From DSC:
First of all, I noted an interesting — and much needed within higher ed — title/position: The chief innovation officer for the Institute of Transformational Learning.

Let’s break that one down a second.

In 20102, The University of Texas’ Board of Regents had a vision that learning needs to be transformed and they created an institute for it — supplying $50 million to support some key mandates:

To make a University of Texas-quality education more accessible and affordable.
To improve student learning outcomes and dramatically increase the number of Texans with a college degree and other advanced educational credentials.

So not only did this board show vision, but also boldness — they put their $$ where they mouth was to support their vision. Innovation was key to this institute, so they created a CIO position, whereby the I stood for Innovation, not Information.

Surely, the level of willingness to experiment in the U of Texas system runs higher than at many other institutions of higher education. So I congratulate them on their culture to be willing to experiment…to adapt…to change. If successful, such programs should help more people obtain the degrees they need to make a living, make a life, make a contribution.*

* A great slogan from Davenport University

Also see:

Need-to-Know-News: GradSkills Program, Competency-Based Education Gets its Own LMS, & College Rankings — from onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com by Debbie Morrison

Excerpt:

LMS for Competency Based Education
Readers may not be too interested in reading about Learning Management System news; often LMSs are considered a necessary evil to faculty and teachers of education institutions. However, news last week shared by Phil Hill over at e-literate is worthy of attention—the launch of a LMS platform geared to competency based education (CBE) programs. The new LMS launched by Helix has a different approach than traditional LMS providers. It’s not catering to an institution, but to a method of teaching and learning—CBE. Interesting.

Insight: There is, and continues to be an emphasis and support ($$$) for creation of CBE programs by the Department of Education (Fain, 2014). This new LMS approach by Helix is another indicator. I predict that we’ll be hearing a lot more about CBE in the next few months with more institutions offering CBE options for students. Why it’s significant, is because CBE is a radical departure from traditional education; it does not rely upon the credit-hour or ‘seat time’ as its often referred to, but upon mastery of units of instruction.

Several institutions are already basing their model on CBE, College for America, an offshoot of Southern New Hampshire University and Capella University for instance. Purdue University is planning on offering a competency-based degree in the near future. Other universities that incorporate CBE principles—Western Governors University and Kentucky Community and Technical College System for its 2-year degree program.

Helix: View of a LMS designed for competency-based education, Phil Hill, e-literate
Competency-Based learning or Personalized Learning, The Department of Education
Daniels awards prize for competency-based degree to Purdue Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University
Experimenting with Aid, Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Reflections on “15 Calif. community colleges to offer bachelor degrees” [Plantz]

On 10/16/2014, in change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, higher education, new business models, pace of change, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, universities, by Daniel Christian

15 Calif. community colleges to offer bachelor degrees — from usatoday.com by Kyle Plantz

Excerpt:

Paving the way for one of the largest community college systems in the United States to offer four-year degrees, on Sept. 28 California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will create a pilot program for 15 community colleges across the state to fill a growing workforce demand for college-educated, skilled workers in fields such as health, science and technology.

Also see:

Community colleges increasingly adding bachelor’s degrees — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Excerpt:
It’s St. Petersburg College, formerly St. Petersburg Junior College, one of an increasing number of community colleges around the country that have started offering four-year bachelor’s degrees in fields for which there is high job demand.

.

From DSC:
I put a similar item out there on Twitter about this same topic and someone came back with some verbiage that hit me as strange…it caught me off guard. She mentioned the word “war” between community colleges and other colleges/universities. I don’t think that’s the word I would use and I think the greater concern for those of us working within higher education might be the dynamics as found in this recent posting. That’s what higher ed should be far more concerned with — i.e. alternatives that keep developing because higher ed is too slow to respond to increasing costs and is not keeping up with a world that’s spinning at speeds that continue to change exponentially, not incrementally.

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ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

Everyone is an entrepreneur in this e-conomy [Strauss]

On 09/30/2014, in 21st century, business, career development, creativity, economics, entrepreneurship, innovation, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Everyone is an entrepreneur in this e-conomy — — from usatoday.com by Steve Strauss

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

That we all work when, where and how we want is not news, of course. Neither is it news that the not-so-great recession transformed work and business, too. Large corporations realized that they didn’t need to keep all those full-time employees with the attendant healthcare costs and other benefits when they could get most of what they wanted by hiring part-timers and independent contractors.

What is news is that all of this change has created a new dynamic. Old traits like loyalty and experience are rapidly being trumped by a different and new set of values such as individual initiative and the need for creativity.

And what this means is that now, today, we all better think of ourselves as entrepreneurs.

From DSC:
I had posted an item earlier today on AI and wondered how such trends affect our curricula. But this posting really speaks to the need to develop our entrepreneurial sides. For students, I would recommend taking (at least some) courses that:

Teach you how to run your own business
Foster your creativity and sense of innovation
Show you how to pivot on a dime / on a moment’s notice
Teach you how to learn

From DSC:
First of all, let me say that I’m a big fan and supporter of a liberal arts education — my degree was in economics (from Northwestern University’s College of Arts & Sciences, as the school was called at the time) and I currently work at a Christian liberal arts college.

That said, within the current higher education landscape, we’re already seeing and hearing more and more about competency-based education, credits for prior learning, and other forms of obtaining a credential in less time. I don’t have data on this, but my mental picture of these things is that such initiatives have had a limited impact, at least so far.

However, as the pace of change has increased, I wonder…what if hiring decisions move significantly more towards “Show me what you can DO…? That’s already taking place to a significant degree in many hiring situations, but my reflection revolves around questions such as:

What if it takes too long to wait for someone to get a 2 or 4-year degree? Will employers start looking more towards what competencies someone has today or can acquire much more quickly?
Will people look outside of traditional higher education to get those skills?

Again, these reflections involve the increasing pace of change.

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

Anyway, such a shift could open doors for new “providers” such as:

Then, consider some quotes from the following article, Tottering Ivory Towers:

Excerpts:

…there is growing interest in new ways of measuring the quality of a degree. The variety of scorecards now available, for instance, means students and their parents have much better and more granular measures of quality than accreditation provides. For another, employers are gradually making greater use of independent, competency-based measures and credentialed courses rather than relying on accredited degrees and credit hours (derided as “seat time” by its critics). Try getting a job in computer network management if you can’t show which Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer courses you have passed. Meanwhile, Udacity is partnering with Google, AT&T, and other technology firms in an “Open Education Alliance” to provide top-level technical skills. Nevertheless, when it comes to alternatives to accreditation, the United States is generally playing catch-up with some other countries. In Britain, for instance, students can earn employer-union certified City & Guilds qualifications while studying at almost any institution, and there are standard competency measures in a variety of professional fields.

…

In a New York Times interview, Google’s senior vice president for people operations, Laszlo Bock, admitted that transcripts, test scores, and even degrees are less useful than other data as predictors of employee success.³ In this environment, an industry-led move to create a more dependable measure of knowledge and ability than a transcript will become increasingly attractive.

…

The critical lesson from the transformation of other industries is that it is likely to be a disastrous mistake to assume you can just tweak an existing business model and be all right. That can work only for a while.

Dmitry Sheynin writes in his article, Is innovation outpacing education? “With the ever-increasing pace of innovation, traditional colleges and universities are failing to train and retrain workers quickly enough. The model of two and four-year degrees, [futurist Thomas Frey] says, is largely incompatible with an industry that gets flipped on its head every couple of quarters.” Again, according to Frey, “The main factor driving change in the labor force is new innovations rendering old jobs obsolete, but no mechanism is in place yet to help workers grow at the pace of evolving technology.”

Self-directed learning, or heutagogy, is key in this fast-paced environment. We all need to be constantly learning, growing, and reinventing ourselves. However, not everyone is comfortable with such an approach. So there are some gaps/opportunities opening up for those organizations who are innovative enough to experiment and to change.

Also see:

It’s time to ditch the ‘old academic identity’ to survive funding cuts — from theconversation.com by Fry and Schutt
Excerpt:
In short, what you do with what you create. Increasingly, the sector is being called to account on this as the world changes around us.
This article re: Southern New Hampshire’s self-paced $10,000 competency-based degree program
Udacity & the Future of Nanodegrees — from etale.org by Bernard Bull
.
A $10,560 bachelor’s degree? — from marketplace.org
Excerpt:
“We’re not going to see bachelor’s programs in English, math, history, sociology, chemistry and all of those fields that are traditional liberal arts fields,” said Constance Carroll, Chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, and a member of the California Community College Baccalaureate Degree Study Group. “What we will see are baccalaureate programs in workforce fields where there is high demand.” Fields like dental hygiene, information technology, and automotive-technology management.

Addendum on 9/17/14:

Building on Competency-Based Education — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush
A Q&A with Ruki Jayaraman

Excerpt:

Argosy University System is among the first institutions in a movement toward competency-based education, creating new models of direct assessment that promise to reduce time-to-degree and offer greater relevance for graduates in the job market. CT talked with Argosy University System’s vice chancellor for academic affairs to learn how that institution tackled competency-based education — creating the first WASC-accredited MBA in its region based on a direct assessment, competency model. Now, Argosy is developing hybrid approaches that combine direct assessment with traditional seat time-based courses.

Addendum on 10/2/14:

Michael B. Horn on Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education: How online competency based learning is changing the higher education landscape — from lambdasolutions.net by Sean Hougan

Addendum on 10/8/14:

Competency-Based Education: No More Semesters? — from npr.org by Anya Kamenetz

Addendum on 10/13/14:

A Competency-Based Educational Shift Is Underway in Higher Ed — from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith
College students are being given a growing list of options for college accreditation.

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The growth mindset is sooooo key for us/our students to accept & live by

On 08/20/2014, in career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, lifelong learning, love of learning, professional development, reinvent, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Also see:

Sal Khan talks with Stanford Professor Carol Dweck about her research on the Growth Mindset
.
What is mindset — by Carol Dweck

Excerpt:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

Teaching a growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports. It enhances relationships.

From DSC:
This belief that we can grow and learn is critically important — for people of all ages. Let’s help folks stay encouraged and keep trying! Keep failing! Keep trying! You’ll/we’ll get it!

Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer [Hwang]

On 08/14/2014, in art, Augmented Reality (AR), biology, business, career development, chemistry, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, drama/theater, engineering, entrepreneurship, geography / geology, higher education, history, instructional design, interaction design, interface design, K-12 related, leadership, liberal arts, library / librarians, marketing/social marketing, marketplaces, mathematics, MBA, media/film, music, new media literacies, organizational change, photography, political science, professional development, programming, psychology, publishing, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, tools, user interface design, web design and production, workplace, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Does Studying Fine Art = Unemployment? Introducing LinkedIn’s Field of Study Explorer — from LinkedIn.com by Kathy Hwang

Excerpt:

[On July 28, 2014], we are pleased to announce a new product – Field of Study Explorer – designed to help students like Candice explore the wide range of careers LinkedIn members have pursued based on what they studied in school.

So let’s explore the validity of this assumption: studying fine art = unemployment by looking at the careers of members who studied Fine & Studio Arts at Universities around the world. Are they all starving artists who live in their parents’ basements?

Also see:

The New Rankings? — from insidehighered.com by Charlie Tyson

Excerpt:

Who majored in Slovak language and literature? At least 14 IBM employees, according to LinkedIn.

Late last month LinkedIn unveiled a “field of study explorer.” Enter a field of study – even one as obscure in the U.S. as Slovak – and you’ll see which companies Slovak majors on LinkedIn work for, which fields they work in and where they went to college. You can also search by college, by industry and by location. You can winnow down, if you desire, to find the employee who majored in Slovak at the Open University and worked in Britain after graduation.

Reflections on “Humans need not apply”

On 08/13/2014, in 21st century, change, emerging technologies, engineering, future of higher education, game-changing environment, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

With thanks to George Veletsianos and @reddit,
& Audrey Watters for posting this item on Twitter

From DSC:
I don’t know much about this video in terms of who created it or what their purpose was in developing it. Though it paints an overly bleak picture IMHO, at least in some ways, I post it here because I think it outlines some solid topics to think about and to plan for — NOW! Not later.

Automation, algorithms, robotics, and more are with us today, but will be even more prevalent tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what the color is of the collar that we’re currently wearing (white, blue, other), more of our jobs are being replaced by such things. As such, we need to think about what the ramifications are concerning these trends. Societies throughout the globe are most definitely in a game-changing environment.

Along these lines, how do such trends affect what is taught? How it’s taught? In K-12? In higher ed? In the corporate world?

How do we stay relevant/employed?

How do we reinvent ourselves and to what?

Are our vocations affected by this? How so?

Also see:

our new robo-reader overlords — from text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com by Alan Jacobs
Teaching Machines: The Drive to Automate Education — from teachingmachin.es by Audrey Watters
AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs — from pewinternet.org by Aaron Smith and Janna Anderson
Excerpt:
The vast majority of respondents to the 2014 Future of the Internet canvassing anticipate that robotics and artificial intelligence will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. But even as they are largely consistent in their predictions for the evolution of technology itself, they are deeply divided on how advances in AI and robotics will impact the economic and employment picture over the next decade.

100 great questions every entrepreneur should ask [Buchanan]

On 08/05/2014, in business, business side of he, entrepreneurship, leadership, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Is there something here for institutions of higher education?

Examples:

How can we become the company that would put us out of business? –Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group
Are we relevant? Will we be relevant five years from now? Ten? –Debra Kaye, innovation consultant and author
If I had to leave my organization for a year and the only communication I could have with employees was a single paragraph, what would I write? –Pat Lencioni, author and founder of The Table Group
Lencioni explains, “Determining the substance of this paragraph forces you to identify the company’s core values and strategies, and the roles and responsibilities of those hypothetically left behind.”

Everyone needs to be a futurist [Gorsht]

On 06/27/2014, in career development, change, future, organizational change, pace of change, professional development, reinvent, staying relevant, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Everyone needs to be a futurist — from innovationexcellence.co by Reuven Gorsht

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

While most of us work on the day-to-day operational details and focus on hitting the metrics, we often assume that there must be someone in the company that is thinking about the future. Whether we assume it’s the board, senior executives or perhaps the corporate strategy team, we somewhat believe that somewhere above our level, both the foresight and plans exist to stave disruption, capitalize on new opportunities and figure out exactly how the company needs to change to either survive or achieve the next paradigm of growth.

This, however, is a fallacy that lands organizations and individuals in a lot of hot water. While most of us are in roles where we are focused on exploiting the current business model, nowadays, everyone’s job, regardless of level, is to be somewhat of a futurist who is able to foresee where the business is going and internalize the change by creating and executing their individual plans.

Everyone needs to be a futurist.

…

Yes, we all have full-time jobs and enough on our plates to keep us busy, but without an investment in gaining the foresight and our own personal meaning on where our company, industry and roles are going, how might we proactively keep ourselves relevant? Sometimes ignorance is bliss, and most of us prefer to be in our comfort zones, but we’ve all seen the recent wake-up calls from companies such as Nokia, New York Times and Blackberry.

When it gets to a point that senior leadership has to write a manifesto that calls for drastic change, it is likely too late to start shifting yourself to adjust to the new realities of your company. Only by being proactive, can we effectively internalize what it may mean for us individually and create the runway necessary to make the shift.

Bottom line: If you’re not spending some time understanding the future and what it means to you personally, you are effectively putting yourself in the position of being tapped on the shoulder one day and being told that you are no longer relevant to where the company is headed.

Reflections on “The most extraordinary speech ever by a graduating MBA” [Byrne]

On 06/24/2014, in Apple, business, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, education technology, ethics, funding / grants, K-12 related, MBA, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The most extraordinary speech ever by a graduating MBA — from LinkedIn.com by John Byrne

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Gerald spoke movingly about a near-death experience with armed gunmen in his hometown of Dallas, and how that changed his life forever. “A strange thing happened as I accepted that I was about to die: I stopped being afraid.” He then decided to “give my life to a cause greater than myself.”

After arriving at Harvard Business School from Yale, Gerald said that HBS “changed who we were; it reminded us who we could be. It reminded us that we didn’t have to wait until we were rich or powerful, or until we actually knew finance, to make a difference. We could act right now.”

With three classmates, Casey founded a non-profit, MBAs Across America, which is a movement of MBAs and entrepreneurs working together to revitalize America. “We saw the signs for hope in entrepreneurs who were on the front lines of change. They showed us that the new ‘bottom line’ in business is the impact you have on your community and the world around you — that no amount of profit could make up for purpose.”

See also:

From DSC:
Though the use of the word “ever” in John Byrne’s posting on LinkedIn.com may be a stretch for some, Casey Gerald did give an incredibly powerful, deep, well-articulated message at Harvard Business School’s 2014 Commencement.

I really appreciated what Casey was getting at — a higher calling for business. A higher calling for one’s life. If it’s only about making a living — vs making a life and a contribution — it comes up short. We can do better. Businesses can do better. Wall Street can do better. With corporations sitting on a trillion+ dollars, how might those massive resources be put towards helping society at large? Here are 2 ideas:

Don’t lay people off so quickly. Take some of those funds and use them to retrain/reinvent people. Keep America’s households running. Help keep peoples’ skillsets relevant, and help keep people employed. Better yet, do this now for those people that you know you will be replacing in the future with algorithms and/or with robotics.
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Fund/outfit educational institutions. For example, it would benefit society greatly if the large tech companies would outfit the K-12 classrooms across the country (yes, I’m mainly thinking of you Apple, Google, & Cisco). Many districts are struggling to implement ed tech and this would be of huge service to the country.

See also:

Can disruption save higher education? [Stansbury]

On 06/10/2014, in change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, disruption, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, new business models, online learning, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, trends, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Can disruption save higher education? — from eCampus News by Meris Stansbury

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Christensen: “The question now is: ‘Is there something that can’t be displaced within a traditional university’s value offering?'”

…

However, Christensen outlined three ways traditional colleges and universities, like his own Harvard Business school, could survive into the future:

Focus on professors
[when recruiting faculty]…focus less on their publishing capabilities and expert knowledge of material, and more on their ability to connect to others.

Understand why technology, like online learning, is disruptive.

Don’t try to change from the inside — you will fail. [Use offsets.]

What price will society pay if higher education cannot revolutionize college as we know it and evolve a sustainable economic model?

The Ivory Tower — description from Wikipedia.org

Excerpt:

Ivory Tower is a 2014 American documentary film written, directed and produced by Andrew Rossi. The film premiered in competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2014.

After its premiere at Sundance Film Festival, Participant Media, Paramount Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired distribution rights of the film. The film is scheduled to have a theatrical release in June 2014 in United Sates by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Paramount Pictures will handle the international release of the film, while Participant Media will handle the campaign for film’s theatrical release.

Class, Cost and College — from nyt.com by Frank Bruni

Excerpt:

Scheduled for theatrical release next month, “Ivory Tower” does an astonishingly thorough tour of the university landscape in a brisk 90 minutes, touching on the major changes and challenges, each of which could sustain its own documentary.

But as I watched it, one theme in particular kept capturing my attention. One set of questions kept coming to mind. How does our current system of higher education square with our concerns about social mobility? What place do the nation’s universities have in our intensifying debate about income inequality? What promise do they hold for lessening it?

The answers in “Ivory Tower” and beyond it aren’t reassuring. Indeed, the greatest crisis may be that while college supposedly represents one of the surest ladders to, and up through, the middle class, it’s not functioning that way, at least not very well.

From DSC:
I graduated with a liberal arts degree. I work at a Christian liberal arts college. I believe in the liberal arts. However, I see our current business models as broken. I, along with many others, see issues and problems that need to be dealt with — whereas many within higher education see no need to change at all. “What’s the problem?” they ask rhetorically…not wanting their great ride of the last 20-30 years to end.

But such individuals aren’t seeing the invisible devastation that’s taking place, such as the mounting/crushing debt on our students’ backs that stays with them for YEARS after they graduate. Such debt loads affect graduates’ ability to purchase a home or to save for retirement (then there’s those who didn’t graduate but spent a great deal of $$ in the attempt to get a degree). I’m also hearing that it’s delaying marriage in some cases. And unlike a car or a house, you can’t realistically refinance many student loans. (Although Elizabeth Warren is seeking to change that situation, thankfully.)

So while I strongly believe in obtaining a college education, we have to get the price down! We have to recognize that there’s an issue. Change must occur.

Reinventing libraries for ‘hanging out, messing around and geeking out’ — from CNN.com by Emanuella Grinberg

Excerpt:

The staff takes special pride in its mentor-led activities, offered in partnerships with various community organizations: a spoken word workshop, a video game program and a makerspace, or workshop, where teens create birdcages, duct tape wallets and other art projects.

It might be a library, but for 18-year-old Alexis Woodward, the atmosphere is more like a “family reunion,” she said.

“It’s always packed until it closes. Everybody goes to the library after school,” said Woodward, who began participating in the spoken word program when she was 14.

Learning Ecosystems

New items from Educause including “Finding New Business Models in Unsettled Times” [LeBlanc]

Reflections on “Humans need not apply”

100 great questions every entrepreneur should ask [Buchanan]

Everyone needs to be a futurist [Gorsht]

Can disruption save higher education? [Stansbury]

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