Pearson acquisitions — from FutureLearn.org by George Siemens

Excerpt:

Education is on a path to globalization, roughly where businesses were in the 1970s. No clear leader exists, conglomerates haven’t made a huge impact yet, technology is marginally used for conducting business, and acquisitions to expand market capacity are rare. That’s changing. Pearson is rapidly pursuing acquisitions. The education sector, from the stance of corporations, is ripe for innovation. For startups this is a great opportunity. The Silicon Valley effect (create a startup with the intention of being purchased by Google, Microsoft, Facebook) is starting to gain traction in the education sector.

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This disturbing trend in the United States will have far-reaching implications.

 

Addendum #1 – 4/18/11:


and

 

Addendum #2 – 4/18/11:
Finally, here are some potentially-effective ideas on how to fix Congress:

Congressional Reform Act of 2011 (If passed, this will eliminate many current problems).

1. Term Limits.

12 years only, one of the possible options below..

A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2.  No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11.
The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen.  Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

 


From DSC:
Here is an idea for a project-based learning assignment for Business, Economics, & Political Science Students/Faculty:


Your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to investigate and answer the following questions:

  • Can people on Wall Street affect the price of a gallon of gasoline?
  • If so:
    • How? How could they do that?
    • How much could they increase the price of a gallon of gasoline?
    • When do they make their move?
    • Are their any limits to what the folks on Wall Street can do?
    • How much are we paying — not to the companies actually producing and selling the gas — but possibly to those who work on Wall Street? (Who is making the $$?)

Find out. That’s your assignment. Then…

  • Once you determine those things and IF there should be a change in our systems…what are your recommendations for change?
  • Who would be involved in making this change? i.e. How could the average citizen get involved to help make positive changes?

 

This tape will self-destruct in 30 seconds…

Ten creative uses for augmented reality — from hiddenltd.com

Here’s an extract from our document, ‘augmented reality marketing strategies: the how to guide for marketers’ highlighting ten creative ways marketers can use augmented reality.

The full version of our guide is embedded on the end of this post…

 

Swedish Online Store Features Live, Interactive Salespeople [VIDEO] — from Mashable.com
Excerpt:

Swedish telecom company 3 Sweden has bridged the gap between Internet commerce and brick and mortar with 3LiveShop. The new site features employees interacting with customers, live, over videoscreens. As the video above shows, the Chatroulette-like site was made possible with custom-built touchscreens that look like they’re right out of The Minority Report. Using the screens, the online salespeople are able to bring up images of phones the company sells and field questions about them.

 

 

 

 

 

Questions/reflections from DSC:
If this does turn out to be the case:

  • Should students have a solid comfort level with technology in order to be marketable in the future?
  • What changes do we need to make to our curriculums — at all levels — to insure their success in this type of world?
  • Will this setup be similar for the online teachers/professors out there?
  • Will this type of setup lead to incredible levels of individualized attention? Or will such services only be for people who can afford this level of personalized attention?
  • What changes will the corporate world need to make to incorporate this type of channel?
  • Will this offer 24x7x365 access, with certain call centers either online 24 hours a day, or different call centers spread throughout the world coming online and offline in synch w/ each other?

When the invincible become “vincible” — from HBR.org by Ron Ashkenas

Excerpt that caught my eye:
We now live in a world in which that sense of security can disappear in a heartbeat — whether your company falls off the cliff, or makes significant changes to avoid the cliff. Like an investment disclaimer for individuals, past performance is no guarantee of future success. So to keep on your guard, ask yourself these questions:

  • What would you do if your job was suddenly eliminated, outsourced, or relocated?
  • How are you preparing yourself today to compete in tomorrow’s global economy?
  • How can I reapply my skills to other areas if my industry no longer has opportunities?

You may not need answers to these types of questions today. But better to address them now — instead of the moment when you’re falling off the cliff.

 


 

Disrupt – Think the Unthinkable: A Book Review — from Gartner by Mark McDonald

There are many books that say you need to ‘disrupt’ your business to remain competitive.  There are almost no books that describe how you create disruption in a clear, concise and step-by-step manner.  Luke Williams’s book Disrupt – think the unthinkable to spark transformation is exactly this type of book.

It’s rare that a book discusses a complex issue, one with such potential for consulting jargon and confusion, and produces a clear, concise and actionable set of advice.  Rather than try to cloud the issue, Williams tackles it head on by giving you the tools and discussion how you think differently and turn that thought into action.  In a way this approach is disruptive in itself and that is a good thing.

Highly recommended as a useful and valuable book that takes the idea of disruption and gives you a way to think through it and put it into practice.  In less than 200 tightly written pages, Williams provides clear and compelling tools that you can use to help identify, classify, and find the opportunities for disruption in your products, services and organization.

MBA Curriculum Changes: Wharton, Yale, and Stanford Lead the Pack — from knewton.com by Christina Yu

Excerpt (citing article from a  U.S. News article):

“Rather than consider pre-digested summaries of company situations, students tackle ‘raw cases’ packed with original data. Instead of being presented with an income statement, for example, they must mine the considerably bulkier annual filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission for data. The raw cases ‘push us to understand,’ says second-year Yale student Jason Hill. ‘They purposely put in more material than you could ever look at, but you have to learn where to look.’” (emphasis DSC)

From DSC:
I found this to be a good, interesting post. I just had a couple of thoughts that I wanted to throw out there re: it.

In looking at trends from an 80,000-foot level, I’d vote for MBA programs integrating much more of the tech-know-how — and/or appreciation of what technologies can bring to the table — as well as teaching grad students about some of the tools/technologies that are emerging these days (and I’d bet that the leaders/schools mentioned in this article are already doing this) .

I remember an instructor years ago — at SFSU’s MSP Program — saying that bots and agents will be the key to making decisions in the future, as there will be too much information for a person to sift through. The streams of content need to be tapped — but in efficient ways. So perhaps the logical step here is for MBA students to learn what bots/agents are, how to use them, and what their applications might be in making business/strategic decisions.

The most successful organizations of the future will be well-versed in technologies and what the applications/benefits of these technologies are. My bet? If you don’t have a technologist at the power table of your organization, the outlook doesn’t look very bright for your organization in terms of surviving and thriving in the future. Organizations will also need to be willing to take risks and move forward without having a full cost-benefit analysis done — as many times these don’t work well or are not even possible when implementing tech-based endeavors/visions.

Also relevant here:

 

The ultimate financial terms glossary — my thanks to Alex Tenorio (Seattle, WA) for this resource

Also relevant/see:

 

.

Addendum (3/22/11):

 

 

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How Netflix innovates and wins — from Forbes.com by Chunka Mui

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Netflix illustrates a design principle that any company aspiring to succeed at disruptive innovation must adopt. It has four parts:

  1. Think Big
  2. Start Small
  3. Fail Quickly
  4. Scale Fast

Hastings pursued his big idea, streaming video, even though it would render obsolete his wonderfully successful, highly tuned, mail-based system for distributing DVDs.

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A model of workplace learning — from The Internet Time Alliance

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4 reasons why an increased pace of change means greater unpredictability — from Trends in the Living Networks by Ross Dawson

IBM launches global skills initiative on business analytics software — from ASTD.org by J. Lorens

IBM has launched a global skills initiative to educate clients, business partners and college students how to use its business analytics and information management software, and other technologies of the Watson computing system to capture information from new sources and use it to create business opportunities.

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