Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/63446
To innovate, we must learn not only to use new technologies, but to behave differently. had the resources and imagination to move forward. On the other hand, smaller, newer organizations cited external forces as the primary source of difficulty: Did they have a market? Could they get the necessary capital? The older institutions had none of these problems. They were simply stuck in their ways. This phenomenon comes through in the business school In terms of technology, what should management educa- tion institutions expect to face in the years to come? Companies increasingly are delivering their training and edu- cation online. For example, the latest figure I have from IBM is that more than 30 percent of their employee training is now online. As this develops, schools that have a technological component, an online component, will have an advantage. That doesn't mean that all courses will be "virtual," but community as well. Professional schools, such as business schools, have always been a little more customer-focused and a little less turf-minded internally. But that does not mean that they may not have the same internal issues, especially with faculty. If an institution is threatened by the changes that are com- that schools will have increasingly developed online capabili- ties and new ways of managing and sharing their information. For instance, I'm very struck by MIT and its offer to put all of its course materials online over the next decade. Many believe such a tactic to be a mistake—what will happen to MIT if it simply gives the education away? But I disagree. I think that MIT will make its education even more valuable, because if people want to learn some- thing, they go to the source. If MIT has material that leaders use, then people who are going to be true leaders will go directly to MIT to learn what they need to know. They'll still need MIT to provide a service. Information gathering is something that is done well ing, that will be a problem. The more threatened the institu- tion, the more threatened the faculty members will be. And the more threatened the faculty members, the more difficult it is to get them, and the institution, to change. What will happen to those institutions that do not change and adapt to new technologies and innovations as quickly as others? If they cannot lead, is it good enough to follow? That's the other end of the question. In big industry shifts like this, the "mediocre middle" often gets driven out. The institutions that are at the high end—the content providers, the knowledge developers, the research resources with brand- name faculty—will flourish. They can add technology as a tool, but their real competitive advantage is in knowledge production. They are seen as sources of information. At the other end, there are schools that become very cre- online. Libraries have transformed themselves into informa- tion management specialists. But you still need people to gather it, pull it together, and make sense of it. There is a reason for a professor to meet with a class and deliver knowledge, instead of simply placing information online for students to find. It is the interaction that's impor- tant. When people meet each other, in a class, seminar, con- ference, or workshop, their experiences are deepened because of their shared experience. Educational institutions now must figure out the role technology will play in that experience, and how to use technology as a tool to enhance it. When you surveyed hundreds of companies about their use of technology, did anything in the results surprise you? I wasn't surprised by the findings, but one trend did come through stronger than I expected. In older, more established institutions, their problems with change and innovation were almost entirely internal. They were worried about whether they ative and efficient distributors of knowledge. Using technol- ogy, they can distribute that knowledge from any location, physically or virtually, and they can do it on demand. The institutions that will be in trouble are those that don't have either of those attributes, those that are simply a campus supplying services to a local market. With these institutions, we may see more alliances and partnerships taking place. I believe the world of higher education is ripe for these kinds of alliances, in which mid-range schools become a part of a much larger, multicampus institution that takes over the facilities and faculty of weaker institutions in order to expand its programs. These mid-range institutions might also seek other kinds of partnerships. For example, they might become the corpo- rate training arm of a consortium of companies. Some are doing this even now, supplying the talent to design custom executive programs. As I write in Evolve!, technology is going to play a large role in these shifts. But the book is not about how technolo- gy will make the world completely virtual. It's about how it will make us change. ■ z BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 17