Educause 2014: Main session #1 Disruptive Innovation and the future of Higher Education

On to the main feature - Disruptive Innovation and the future of Higher Education.

The main keynote speaker is Clay Christenson who was voted the ‘most influential thinker’ by the top 100 CEOs and is a leading Harvard professor.  He’s also a lay preacher.

Clay suggests that disruptive innovation tends to be allied to decentralisation.    Sustained innovation is different (I think he perhaps means that incremental improvement of an existing product = sustained innovation as distinct from disruptive innovation). 

Quote  "Words we didn't use 10 years ago: social media, smartphone, apps, WiFi, Twitter, MOOC, WiKi, 3D printing and wearables"

An example from the 80s is Digital.  They were original innovators with their disruptive – to IBM – MINI computer technology.  But Digital too were overtaken by another ‘decentralised’ disruptive innovation.  This, of course, was the PC and upstart Microsoft.    Initially, Digital didn’t recognise the threat, were dismissive and thought PCs were not really suited to the business environment.  But, decentralised business units started buying PCs and new innovators started making cheap software for these PCs.    Digital tried to combat the PC by initially providing better software on their MINI computers – an approach that Clay describes as ‘incremental innovation’ – i.e. make the same product a bit better.  This, of course, was a doomed strategy with IBM, Intel and Microsoft eventually dominating a brand new huge consumer market and vastly bigger business market.  But, the main point is that there is a central thread of decentralisation running through disruptive innovation.  We can also think about Wang, Data General, Sun, Silicon Graphics and others whose demise followed the same track.

Clay makes the point that ‘modularity’ is also a central component of disruptive innovation and is allied to decentralisation.   If a new product can both take advantage of decentralisation and is also modular then watch out.

Adam Smith’s ‘invisible’ hand of informed capitalism suggested that capital will be spent efficiently without need for much central control.   In the 70s Alfred Chandler wrote the ‘visible’ hand of managerial capitalism.  Chandler’s suggestion is that there needs to be a managed and directed approach to some aspects of capitalism e.g. transport infrastructure needs to be co-ordinated and managed to ensure there is a strategic, long term and sustainable investment approach.  Without this longer term and planned approach much of what we, as a society, need will not be provided efficiently or at all.  Other examples might be power infrastructure and perhaps Education which is the focus of this presentation.

Clay suggests that Higher Education is moving more from ‘visible’ to Adam Smith’s original ‘invisible’ informed capitalism via modularity.  What does this mean?  Higher Education is moving towards providing widely available and online modules.  This could be game changing with ‘customers’ able to take individual accreditations from many institutions and put these together towards a qualification.  This probably isn’t what institutions expect or recognise as a serious challenge but, Clay reckons, a momentum might grow.  New Higher Education providers will offer their own accreditation and build on accredited modules provided by traditional Universities.  This would perhaps lead to major disruption with traditional Universities driven towards more short term decision making driven by economic imperatives – leaning towards Adam Smith’s ‘invisible’ informed hand of capitalism. 

Disruptive innovator, Apple, have created their closed, proprietary and interdependent product architecture.  Obviously, this has been tremendously successful and has catapulted Apple to be the most valuable quoted public company.  Clay suggests there is danger ahead.  He draws parallels with Digital et al in the 80s.  Android, with its modular and decentralised approach, now has 80% Smartphone market share.  Will Apple’s technology fall off a cliff? – driven by Android’s decentralised and modular approach?  Clay's not sure but it would fit the theory.
First part of this session was spent congratulating people serving on Educause committees and awards for contributions over the past year. Fair enough and perhaps quite American. We don’t do this in the UK very well. People seem to be taking the awards quite seriously with some tears being shed. In Europe, we’re probably too cynical and lacking in clear eyed confidence to take this stuff as seriously. I could be wrong.