Then globalization and the Internet changed everything. Customers suddenly had real choices, access to instant reliable information and the ability to communicate with each other. Power in the marketplace shifted from seller to buyer. Customers started insisting on ‘better, cheaper, quicker and smaller,’ along with ‘more convenient, reliable and personalized.’ Continuous, even transformational, innovation have become requirements for survival.”

Steve Denning, “The Management Revolution That’s Already Happening,”
Forbes Magazine, May 30, 2013.

 

 

ChangeIsOptionalDanielChristian-evolllutionDotcom-June2013

 

.

PDF of article here

 

 

Top-Ten IT Issues, 2013: Welcome to the Connected Age — from educause review online by Susan Grajek

Also see:

.

From DSC:
If we want organizations to survive/thrive in the future, we really need to drop the word “geek” from our vocabularies and get rid of the mental tapes and images that the word “geek” suggests.  It’s just not helpful.

 

 

Tagged with:  

Class of 2013: Your careers will be volatile and risky. Learn to love it. — from linkedin.com/by Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO at GE

Excerpt:

Success in the 21 century will come to those that that can get in front of the trends, move quickly, innovate, and work together to deliver results. And our ability to contribute to the century in which we live will come down to our willingness and ability to do five things.

  • Change
    “We can’t wait for the economy to stabilize. We can’t wait for a time when there is more certainty. It used to be that you only had to manage momentum. Today, you have to create your own future. And that means change.”

    “Continuously innovate in your lifetime, regardless of your profession and regardless of past performance. You must choose change.”
  • Learn
  • Risk
  • Persist
  • Lead.

.

Also see:

 

 

TheNextGenerationUniversity-May2013

.

Excerpt:

As the nation struggles to find new ways to increase college access and completion rates while lowering costs, a handful of “Next Generation Universities” are embracing key strategies that make them models for national reform. The report The Next Generation University comes at a time when too many public universities are failing to respond to the nation’s higher education crisis. Rather than expanding enrollment and focusing limited dollars on the neediest of students, many institutions are instead restricting enrollments and encouraging the use of student-aid dollars on merit awards. But, according to the report, some schools are breaking the mold by boldly restructuring operating costs and creating clear, accelerated pathways for students.

Download the full report here.

.

In addition to the report, see:

 

Also see:

  • What happens when 2 colleges become one — from chronicle.com by Ricardo Azziz
    Excerpt:
    Earlier this year, Moody’s Investors Service released its annual assessment of higher education in the United States, a report that viewed the sector’s short-term outlook as largely negative amid growing economic pressures. The analysts, however, applauded the efforts of a few states that were trying to merge or consolidate campuses because such efforts “foster operating efficiencies and reduce costs amid declining state support.”

Amazing career advice for college grads from LinkedIn’s billionaire founder — from businessinsider.com by Nicholas Carlson

Excerpt:

To answer those questions Hoffman and Ben Casnocha first co-authored a book called “The Start-up of You.”

Then, expanding on ideas from that book, they created a slideshow presentation for college grads called “The 3 Secrets of Highly Successful Graduates” and allowed us to republish it here.

 

Also see:

  • 3 steps for plotting your personal future in an uncertain world — from fastcoexist.com by Venessa Miemis
    What’s the best way to feel productive and valued at work and in life? Having a sense of where you’re going. To do that, you need to forecast your own future, and then put yourself on the path to get there.

The emergence of Chief Digital Officers — from sloanreview.mit.edu by Robert Berkman
As social and other digital technologies shift responsibilities in the C-suite, businesses are creating a new position, the chief digital officer or CDO, to focus their digital strategy. This is the fifth and final piece in our series on how social business is changing power dynamics in the C-suite.

.

Also see:

  • The coming era of ‘on-demand’ marketing — from mckinsey.com by Peter Dahlström and David Edelman
    Emerging technologies are poised to personalize the consumer experience radically—in real time and almost everywhere. It’s not too early to prepare.

WhyLeanStartUpChangesEverything-SteveBlank-May2013

 

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

But recently an important countervailing force has emerged, one that can make the process of starting a company less risky. It’s a methodology called the “lean start-up,” and it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as “minimum viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

From DSC:
This fits into my thinking/recommendation that each institution of higher education should create a much smaller, more nimble group within itself — whose goal is to experiment, pivot, adapt, etc. — in order to find out what’s working and what’s not working.  It’s why I have categories and tags for words like “experimentation,” “staying relevant,” “reinvent,” “innovation,” “surviving,” and “disruption.”

The trick is/will be how NOT to be a commodity –what’s going to differentiate your college or university?

 

 

 

 

The IT conversation we should be having — from HBR.org by Jim Stikeleather

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

It is a conversation about the increasing importance of information technology and the role it must assume in every enterprise, regardless of size, industry or geography.

Our observations:

  • CEOs are demanding more visible value from their CIOs, in terms of generating revenue, gaining new customers, and increasing customer satisfaction.
  • Increasingly, the CIO and IT must be seen less as developing and deploying technology, and more as a source of innovation and transformation that delivers business value, leveraging technology instead of directly delivering it.
  • The CIO must be responsible and accountable if technology enables, facilitates or accelerates competition that the C-suite didn’t see coming, or allows the enterprise to miss opportunities because the C-suite did not understand the possibilities technology offered.
  • CIOs today must adapt or risk being marginalized.

 

From DSC:
This is critical in the higher ed space as well!

The majority of the higher education industry still isn’t getting it — we are operating in a brand new ball game where technology must be used strategically It’s not just about building and maintaining the infrastructure/plumbing anymore (though that is extremely important as well). It’s about the strategic, innovative use of IT that counts from here on out.

 

 

The Device Conundrum – 1:1 vs BYOD — from esheninger.blogspot.com by Eric Sheninger

Excerpt:

As we continue to advance in the digital age schools and districts are beginning to re-think pedagogy and learning environments by instituting either 1:1 device programs or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives. In my opinion, schools that wish to create the most relevant and meaningful learning culture will go in one of these directions. It is tough to argue the potential impact of either program that is implemented diligently and with a focus on learning that will not result in the enhancement of essential skills sets that our students need to succeed in today’s digital world. Probably the most significant impact, either 1:1 or BYOD can have is in the area of teaching digital responsibility, citizenship, and the creation of positive footprints online. After all, in the real world that we are preparing our students for, technological literacies and proficiencies are the cornerstones of numerous career paths.

 

From DSC:
Check out the some solid comments/perspectives from others as well.

The Next Wave of Business and Finance Students Will Be “Renaissance Technologists” — from edtechmagazine.com by Karen Nitkin
Data-driven environments require business students to be trained on the latest technology.

Excerpts:

  • “Now, finance is a high-tech environment, just as much as manufacturing is, and the academic world hasn’t really caught up to that yet.”
  • “The abundance of data available to industry through the Internet, social networks, sensor networks and financial-transaction systems will transform business decisions.”
Tagged with:  

The transience of power:  The powerful do not stay that way for long — from The Economist

Excerpt:

But Mr Naím has good objections to the objections. His argument is not that companies are shrinking but that they are becoming more fragile. Internet giants can no longer rely on the economies of scale that kept General Motors and Sears on top for decades. Rather, they must constantly struggle to keep their products innovative and their brands fashionable—or fall prey to more agile upstarts. Powerful people are less secure than they were, too. The composition of the top 1% is constantly changing as CEOs lose their jobs and young go-getters outpace their elders.

Mr Naím celebrates the anti-power revolution for holding the mighty to account and providing ordinary people with opportunities. But he sees downsides, too. The more slippery power becomes, the more the world is ruled by short-term incentives and ever-changing fears. Politicians fail to tackle long-term problems such as climate change. Companies think of little besides the struggle for survival. Nonetheless, it would be worse if the populists were right and the 1% really did rule the world.

Google is retiring Google Reader as of July 1, 2013.

Excerpt:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

 

From DSC:
To Google (and others) —

You should know that when you do this sort of thing, it creates a great deal of nervousness and uncertainty in K-12 and in higher ed.  We ask, well if we go with (Google Docs, Google Drive, Google ___) will they pull it in the future? What would we do at that point? It also causes us to pause in moving things to the cloud…

Below, I will be adding some alternatives that I’ve seen people mentioning:

 

 

Addendum on 3/15/13 and in defense of Google…
As Google stated, usage is low and RSS didn’t hit the mainstream in the current form.  Which is too bad, because it’s a very promising technology!  Also from this page, here’s a solid graphic that shows the decline in usage:

.

 

 

9 key strategic shifts to watch — from elearnmag.acm.org by Denise Doig

Excerpt:

There are so many great sessions at Learning Solutions 2013, it’s hard to decide which one to choose. If you follow eLearn Mag on Twitter, you may have seen some of what I am about to share. But there’s a lot more that needs to be said.

Earlier today, Marc Rosenberg led a brilliant session: ”Building eLearning Strategy for the Future: Nine Key Shifts to Watch.” He first defined what he meant by strategy, he followed with a discussion on how to be strategic vs. tactical, and then spent most of the hour breaking down the 9 key shifts to watch.

Tagged with:  

The Master List of the Collaborative Economy: Rent and Trade Everything — from web-strategist.com by Jeremiah Owyang

Excerpt:

[Collaborative Economy Defined:  A digital system that manages the coordination of buyers and sellers who offer or exchange used products and remnant services]

© 2024 | Daniel Christian