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Title : standard furniture avion
standard furniture avion
[chris whitaker]good afternoon, everyone. i always regret interruptingthe great networking that goes on at these events, but, uh, we must, uh,get on with the show. so, uh, first of all,i want to, uh, welcome all of those who are joining us from the working group sessions. so, uh, some of usfrom the, uh, institutions have had a,had a fairly lengthy day already, starting at 7:30 this morning.
so i wanna welcome folks from the, uh, working groups. but i also wantto extend a special welcome to those who are attending, uh, the first part of the conference right now for our, our keynote address. uh, we've had a busy day so far with some, uh,thought provoking discussions and also some discussions amongst the institutions on charting the future course of polytechnics canada. uh, so, so welcome,uh, to everyone.
i was also asked just to say, uh, because there's many people on social media, and i wanna remind folks that we do have a, a hashtag. it's, uh, polycan,#polycan2016. is that right, robert?yeah, i got the thumbs up. so all of you that want to, uh,to tweet, uh, especially when you're, uh, hearingour, uh, keynote speaker today, uh, by all means, uh,please, uh, use that hashtag. so, uh, we, we begin the afternoonportion of the agenda
with a session featuring one of the most prolific thought leaders on the future of education. and we're very pleased to have michael horn, uh, back at humber. so michael horn was here,last spoke at humber in 2013 when he introduced usto the best approach to disrupting class education and learning. i thought disrupting the class was throwing paper airplanes, but i think he's talking about, uh,uh, about something else. so we're delighted to have, uh,have michael back
and, uh, have him here to talk,talk to both the college and our polytechnic partnersfrom across canada about his latest thinking on how we can integrate new discoveries and mentor studentsin ways that disrupt the traditional mode of higher education. and we know that our polytechnicmodel of education is challenging traditional paradigms, and, uh,many of the conversations, uh, the next, uh, uh,today a- and tomorrow
are focused on that theme. but first, uh,please let me, uh, introduce, uh, rick huijbregts,who is going to introduce michael horn. uh, rick, uh,is the managing director of digital transformation and industry solutions, uh, cisco americas. uh, and rick leadsdigital transformation business development and sales acceleration at cisco. uh, his team provides innovativeand business relevant solutions
to priority industriessuch as manufacturing, healthcare, real estate,and smart and connected communities. uh, rick is a big supporter of polytechnics canada. we had the opportunity to meet, uh,a few months ago in ottawa at our national strategy groupwhen we met with, uh, many federal, uh, government politiciansa- and decisions makers. and, uh, and he's a great, uh,great supporter of our cause. um, prior to joining cisco, rick was co-founder and ceoat ed... edificium
and executive director of the center of design informatics at the harvard design school. so rick, uh,continues to be a faculty member at the harvard university,uh, design school, he's the executive-in-residenceand chair for the building automation program advisory committee at george brown college –so shout out to george brown – and serves onthe industry advisory board for the mechanical and industrial engineering department at u of t.
rick is also a founding member on the evergreen cityworks leaders council. please join me in welcoming rick huijbregts. [audience applause] [rick huijbregts] i was just thinkingthat my introduction was longer than what i'm going to say here. uh, but thank you chris,and, uh, thank you humber for allowing us to, uh, be a presenting sponsor at your conference.
um, i'm here with some of my colleagues,i think dan madon is here somewhere, and tom,and keith. uh, and we are here, uh,with all of us – not all of us, we have more colleagues that couldn't make it – but we love the polytechnics. you are incredibly relevant for usand to us. and we hire a ton of people from your programs. and our customers are hiringa ton of people from your programs. we live in a world that is drasticallyand rapidly changing
because of digital transformation,uh, and technologies. and that means the educationneeds to adapt and, and keep up really with the changing demands of the work-uh, of the employers in canada. and that's why we love your mission. and that is to create highly qualifiedand skilled workers for canada's employers. and we are one of them. uh, and as i said,our customers are one of them. so, um, we, we encourage youto keep doing your amazing work,
and we will continue to do our partto support each and every one of you because we think that there has to bemuch more attention going into the polytechnic system, and we need much more skilled workforcethat can really help us in this digital and, and new world. so it is my honour, and it's very, uh, kind of, um,apropos, i guess, to introduce michael horn. and, um, i didn't meet michaeluntil just earlier,
and i'm just reading his bi,and i'm thinking he needs no introduction because if you don't know michael horn, uh, i don't know what you're doing here,to be honest. he's co-founderof the clayton christensen institute for disruptive learning. so you must have all read his book, uh, "how disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns." and that is about lookingat new and innovative ways of how learning, teaching, classroom,everything really is changing,
and you are at the centre of driving that. and that is going to deliverthe next generation workforce that is gonna make canada a lot more productive. uh, so michael has, obviously,tons of expertise, includes disruptive innovation, online blended and competency model,uh, based learning, and is very focused on student centred learning. and today,he's going to guide us through some of those disruptionsa- and concepts
and how it will disrupt and change the canadian model. and as i said,you are right at the centre of it. so i'm confident we're gonnanot only going to learn a lot, and taking away a lot from this, that we'll help continue to shapecanada's education. so please join me in welcoming michael horn. [michael horn] thank you.uh, good afternoon everyone. [audience] good afternoon.[michael] good afternoon, alright. let's, let's get the education thing goin'.
so it's a pleasure to be back at humber college. uh, i'm,i'm really delighted to be here. uh, both just because a...as was just said, uh, my sense right now is that industry, uh, is changing, uh, just a ton right now. what businesses think they want,they don't always know. uh, and the opportunityfor the polytechnics to play a significant role, not just in simply training for, uh, industry,
but also helping industry,quite frankly, find itself. uh, and that, and that partnership,that cooperation, i, i think is a significant opportunity,uh, not just in canada, quite frankly, but to have colleges like this, uh,throughout the world, i think is increasingly important to the vitality of our societies. and so to be a part of this, uh,couple day conversation, you get to hear from my friendjeff selingo tomorrow, i believe, uh, i...i think you're part of a really, really important dialogue right now,
uh, for the future of, uh... uh, canada's wellbeing, uh, but, but more generally,again, i think this is- we're, we're talking about how we fuel growth and prosperity and, and, quite frankly,civic society's health, uh, in the future worldwide. what i thought i would talk about today, uh, for those of you who were at the lunchtime talk, uh, th- the deputy mis- minister gave, uh, he sorta stole my thunder in some ways,
but also provided a great platform talking about disruptive innovation, uh, and, and sort ofhow it's affected the broader, uh, workforce and, and landscape, uh, just in terms of how industry has changed itself. and so what i thought i would do,if you'll, if you'll permit me, is geek out just a little bit and go pretty deep into the theory of what is disruptive innovation itself. uh, it's a phrase that you hear all the time. in silicon valley,in the united states where i'm from,
uh, a... and used to live, you would hear entrepreneursall the time say we're gonna disrupt this,we're gonna disrupt that. and most people misuse the phrase pretty consistently. so i thought we would justgo very deep into what really is disruptive innovation with some industry, uh, industryexamples well outside of education. just to really understand, uh, the...the principle and the theory itself. how it's playing itselfthrough the broader economy,
uh, because i thinkthat has huge implications for the sorts of trainingand how, how you think about programatic design at the polytechnics. and then, we'll switch into how it's actually changing education itself. and there the conversation will be twofold. one, what the-what these disruptive innovations that we see emerging in post-secondary education more broadly enable us to doas we think about transforming pedagogy to reach eachand every single student
that comes through the doors of your colleges, first. and secondly,how we, uh, secondly, how the landscape is actually in some ways threatening to colleges, universities,post-secondary education more broadly worldwide. what are the,who are the new players? what are they doing?how are they quote/unquote unbundling higher education? and then thinking about some of those new players
that actually can be really significanthelps and aids to all of you as you think about, uh,keeping your education system up for the demands of this 21st century and this model, uh, to,to really stay up with the times. so i'll,i'll sorta play two angles of that. both some of the players that i think are emerging that are threatening in much of the world. i- i'm not personally convinced that they'll be threatening in canada, but we can talk about why, uh,maybe during the q and a.
and then, secondly,uh, again, some of these new players that could be actually tremendous helps to all of you as you lead and pioneer that innovation. so that's the basic plan for the talk. and then, hopefully,have some opportunity for a good conversation,both in the q and a and afterwards during the reception. uh, so i'll, i'll start with a little bit of a backdrop, which is, uh, i, i think you heardfrom the deputy minister,
uh, for those, again,who were, who were at the lunch today, but really worldwide,we're hearing this growing chorus questioning post-secondary education's quality. we're h- asking what do people actually learn in their programs? how do we know? how do we move from governing inputsto actually thinking about outcomes? this was a study done in the united states that showeda shocking number of students go to higher education and, quite frankly,
not only don't learn much,but actually regress in many ways, uh, in their learning over their two or four years, uh, in a given program. and then i think the bigger factor,from my perspective, is this one,the job mismatch paradox that we hear a lot about,uh, worldwide right now. which is that employers are saying that they have millionsof job openings worldwide for which they cannot find qualified employees to hire.
and at the same time, uh, uh,there are, we know, millions of people who are looking for work and would love to get into the workforce in a meaningful way. and this mismatch of peoplelooking for millions of jobs and yet not, uh,millions of people looking for jobs, uh, is, is just something that i think post-secondary education has to be at the, uh, solution of an- and has to help solve right now. and that's the opportunity, i think,in which we're functioning. but also the threat that's giving rise to some of these new players,
uh, in post-secondary education that i think, in some ways, are potentially threatening to colleges and universities as we have known them. now, against that backdrop is this concept of disruptive innovation. so what is disruptive innovation? when you hear that phrase, i don't want you to think of... you know, it's funny, actually,you... you mentioned that disruption you thought of as throwing paper airplanes in class.
when i wrote disrupting class, i think a lot ofmy middle school teachers felt like i had finally written my autobiography. um, but w- what we mean by itis... is a process that transforms industriesthat are characterized by things that are complicated, expensive, inaccessible,and deeply centralized such that only a limited few people can partake of their benefits and transforms itinto products and services
that are far more affordable,convenient, accessible, and simple such that those people now have access to them. and they start as pretty primitive, but they get better,and better, and better over time such that people start to migrate outto these disruptive innovations. and that's how transformation in sector after sector occurs. now, what's interesting is that when professor clayton christensen at, at harvard, when he came to this question of...of discovering disruptive innovation,
he started with this question of, "i wonder why successful companies fail?" okay? and it's an interesting questionif you think about it because why poorly run companies or bad companies,why they fail? that's fairly obvious, right? bad, uh, bad managers,bad employees, bad processes, not market fit,whatever it is. but successful enterprises,long track records of success,
great people, great employees,great managers, great processes, why they fail is a lot less obvious. and yet, if you look through the sweep of business history, certainly, but even the history of,of countries and... and societies, those organizations that are once at the top, a generation or two later in businessare invariably in the middle of the pack or even the bottom of the heap in some cases. and so the question was,"why is success so hard to sucsta- to sustain?"
and he reached, for someone at harvard,a very counterintuitive conclusion, perhaps not counterintuitive to all of you, but that the very principles of good management taught at places like harvard ultimately spelled every organization's demise. okay? so i'll...i'll explain through this diagram here. what i've done is... i want you to imaginethat innermost circle as representing those peoplewho have the most expertise
or wealth in a given field. and that as you go out successive circles, it represents people who have less expertise or less wealth. every industry tends to get its start in that centre circle. and you can destr-describe the dynamics of that industry through this simple two by two,uh, graph, where you have performance on the y axis, and time on the x axis,okay? and in every sector,what we see
is that there's two trajectories of improvement. the first one is this relatively flat line. this is the pace of performance that those customersinside that inner circle that have lots of expertise and wealth can absorb over time. and the reason it's relatively flat is because the basic jobs that we have in our lives, the problems that we have to solve, they don't change that much from day to day.
what you hadto get done yesterday is similar to what you're gonna tackle today and probably similar to the challenges you'll have tomorrow. now, of course there's a range. there's some people at the low end who are, uh, satisfied with very little in the way of performance. and there's some people at the high endwho no matter how much you give 'em, they're never satisfied,right? then you all have the misfortune of ei- either being those people
or working with those people. now,this dynamic exists, and there's a second trajectory that's really interesting. and this is the pace of technological improvement. and what it saysis that every technology when it gets its start, it starts thereon the left hand side as not good enough for the majority of customers or users in a given field, but that technology improves faster than do our lives change.
so what at one point was not good enoughfor the majority of users in a field, over time, packs in more and more performance, functions, features,speed, whatever, such that it actuallygreatly overserves many people in the field,okay? and we see this dynamic consistently over and over again. and what we see is that the march up that blue line, sometimes they're year to yearincremental improvements, and other times they're giant breakthrough leaps forward.
but that these smallincremental improvements, or the giant breakthrough leaps forward, are actually the same typeof innovation. and we call ita sustaining innovation because it sustains that trajectory of improvement to build better products and services,to serve more demanding customers, and in the world of business,to often make better profits. in the world of non-profits or government organizations, to build prestige.okay?
and, uh, organizations who were the leadersat the beginning of that blue line are invariably the leaders at the end of that blue line. incumbents almost always win sustaining innovation battles. and the reason isthey're so motivated to serve their most demanding customers,and build better products, and build better services for them, that it doesn't matter how routine the change is, or how breakthrough the leap has to be,
they almost always figure out a way to get it done. now, every once in a while,far more infrequently, there comes along a different type of innovation out in the world. and clay gave this the name disruptive innovation, which was a terribly unfortunate,uh, name it turns out, because disruption has lots of other pri- prior connotations in the english language. um, but what he meant by it was that disruptions effectively disruptedthe trajectory of improvement
as it existed in that inner circle. and what a disruption did was bring forth a new technology in the form of a product or servicethat was actually quite primitive compared to the leading products and services in that inner circle. and for all these people we call non-consumers in the outer circle – they didn't have enough money,or expertise, or whatnot to be able to afford or accessthe leading products and services – these disruptive innovations that seemed primitive, that disrupted that trajectory of improvement,
would bring fortha new value proposition. so they'd literally redefine that y axis, that measure of performance, and bring forth something that was more affordable, convenient, simple, accessible,plant itself in these outer circles among these non-consumers, for whom this didn't look like a primitive innovation at all, because it was way better than their alternative, which was quite literally nothing at all.
from there, it would then get better,and better, and better, and better, and over time, what was primitive would become quite good, and the people who were in those inner circles, delighted with their original products and services, as they started to be overshot by the sustaining innovation, they would migrate one by one into the outer circle, delighted by somethingthat was now good enough as it had gotten better, and was, by the way,more affordable,
convenient, accessible,and so forth, right? that sounded like a good idea. and historically, historically, entrants have typically won these battles of disruption. for some reason,just disrupting your car- your trajectory of improvement really tripped up the leaders. and so i mentioned, when clay entered academia in 1989 at harvard, the question he brought with him was why do these successful organizations trip up?
why do they struggle to sustain success? and so just to illustrate this diagram, this is a lot of abstractions up there right now, i just want to tell a story that, uh, played out in... in massachusetts, uh,where i live now, in the united states, in the 1970s and 80s with a company called digital equipment corporation, or dec. anyone work with- for decbefore i... anyone? okay.alright, i'm in safe space.
so... so digital equipment corporation,for those of you who remember... people remember digital equipment corporation? okay, cool. so, um, they were, sorta, the leading company of that era in many ways. sorta the google or the facebookof... of the 1970s and 80s – sorry, this keeps coming off –um, the 1970s or 80s. and, uh, whenever people would look at this company that built,for those of you that remember,
minicomputers, right?which were about the size of, maybe, a filing cabinet or that podium there. so not particularly mini, but relative to a mainframe that would fill an entire room, they were mini. um, whenever people would look at why... why digital equipment corporationwas so good, they would say not only do they have the best employees, processes, technologists,et cetera,
but these guys just have the best managers and leaders, who year over year make the right decisions. they're just the smartest guys in the room. the implication being,if you were just as smart as they were, you would also make great decisions and be great, but you're probably not,so therefore, you just can't compete with this great company. okay? true story.you could look at business week or wall street journal and read these, uh, columns and op-eds.
so an interesting thing happened thoughto digital equipment corporation. this high flying company through the 70s, the majority of the 80s. in 1988-89,within a six month time period, for those of you that remember,really quickly, the company literally just fell off a cliff and basically collapsed within six months. by '94, it had been sold off for nothing basically, okay? really rapidly.
and so you'd go backto these, uh, journals that had said these guys were just the smartest people in the room, uh, and that's why they were so good,and say what happened to them now? how did they just collapse like that out of nowhere? and they'd say, "gosh, those stupid managers running the company." very same people mind you. if they had only seen the personal computer coming, they could have caught the wave,but they missed the personal computer, never invested in it,and therefore,
they're just going to be consigned to the ashtray of history. so the question clay brought with him in 1989, same time he entered academia, was not only why is success hard to,hard to sustain, but why do smart managers decide to become stupid? right? and that- i mean, it's,it's a silly question on the one hand, but when you think about it,that's often our explanation for failure in society.
and yet,it did not make any sense here. because it wasn't just digital equipment corporation that collapsed, but it was literally almostevery single minicomputer business collapsed in unison during that time period. prime, data general,wang, hewlett, literally all of them. and while you'd expect companies to collude on price occasionally, to collude to collapse was a bit of a stretch of the imagination.
yet,that's what happened, right? so something else had to be going on. and if you dug into the story,indeed it was. which was in the 1980s, management at dec was essentially seeingtwo kinds of business plans. the first kind said, right now you build these unbelievable technological marvels of this age, uh, these minicomputers,and you- you're able to, uh, uh, charge a fair amount of money,quarter million dollars,
and get 45 percent gross margins. and we've been doingwhat the whiz kids at the harvard business school tell us to do, which is to listen to our best customers. and holy cow,they're saying that if would build just a next generation minicomputer, they'd be delighted to pay you500,000 dollars on 60 percent gross margins. that sounded pretty good, right?that's good data.
another groupcame to them and said, "you just don't get it,do you? if you just get up outsi- outside of your seats and look outside the window, you'd see there's this thing coming called the personal computer. i'm telling you it's gonna change the world." so management, to their credit,got outta their seats, they saw the personal computer. at digital equipment,they actually built four versions of it,
and tried to sell it. but they also saw a few other things about those early personal computers. okay, moment of honesty.how many people remember personal compu- the early personal computers? okay. thank you.um, i appreciate honesty. you don't always get that in the states. um, not just because donald trumpis somehow our nominee. anyway, um, uh, so... trust me,i'm more scared than you are.
um, so... sorry. um, so every once in a while,uh, they'd get up and they'd see these personal computers, and do you remember how primitive those early machines were? they could barely do word processing,right? you had to stopand coax the stupid thing to catch up with your fingersevery once in a while so that the letters would literally catch up with your fingers. the basic microprocessorinside those machines
couldn't even handle a basic application like that. they would, um, take these machines that they had had built, these four versions of the personal computer, and they'd bring itto their demanding customers to whom they sold, uh,minicomputers and say, "hey, look what we just, uh, built.will you buy it?" they said, "not a chance.it can't do anything that we need computers for. no way we're gonna buy that."
and then they looked at the business plans, which promised that they could chargea couple thousand dollars on 40 percent gross margins in the good years, which were quickly gonna collapse to 20 percent. and so the decision management,in essence, faced was this. should we buildbetter products and services for our more demanding customers for even better profits, or should we buildworse products and services that our customers can't useand will not buy
for profits that would kill our business model. what should we do? it's called the innovator's dilemma. and they, so they actually did the very logical thing, what we would call good,smart management, which was to cont-continue to go up market. for a long time,the signals that the personal computer was growing out there among non-consumers – i- if you recall,it started with children,
and hobbyists,and people like that who couldn't afford minicomputers, far better than their alternative,nothing at all – didn't matter. but by 1989, the personal computerstarted to get good enough that corporations and universities could start to use these machines, and whoosh, the volume literallygot sucked out of that inner circle into the outer circle. and the volume collapsed of their markets.
and the minicomputer business just collapsed. really punishing tale,right? because data that we always hang on, and i- i'm just saying this right now because i thought the deputy minister, uh, at lunch did a really good job. again,for those of you that were there, said, "you can't always rely on data because by its nature, god created data to only look backward." and so sometimesyou gotta have a theory
about what's gonna go forward in the future, or gut instinct or s- you know, a theory that helps you understand,in advance, the data,what you're gonna do. um, but really punishing talearound this because apple came out and the, uh,other personal computer companies came out with this primitive product that changed the world, and lay- they literally were incapable of doing it. we see this process play itself out over and over again.
i've put up here – and forgive me,the columns are mislabeled – but companies, uh, in... in the yesterday column who really should have been, like,many, many yesterdays ago, um, who have been disrupted by those in the today column, who really should have been, like,maybe ten years ago, is the way it should be labeled, um, who you can tell that same storyof disruption about, right? so we can go into the autom-uh, automotive business and look at how toyota,over the last many years,
has disrupted, uh, uh,the detroit automakers – gm, ford, and so forth. toyota did not start at the high flying, uh, high end with the high flying lexuses, right? people remember the early toyota cars that they started with? anyone? crummy coronas that rusted quickly, right? weren't very good, 1960s.and then they got better. from the corona, they went up marketto the, uh, uh, tercel, the corolla, the camry, the 4runner,the avalon, and then the lexus.
literally changed the world. if you were sitting there in detroit, you looked out at those buggersand, you know, said, you know, "hey, maybe we oughta go out thereand compete with those buggers out in that outer circle." and so they'd send out in a pinto or a chevette. [audience laughter] american ingenuity. uh, [laughs] but, but in truth,
when they compared the marginsof selling one of those vehicles with the unmitigated blessingof being able to push out another cadillac escalade,or a ford explorer, just didn't make any sense,right? so they'd retreat back into their inner circle, push out more of those big cars,gas guzzling cars and so forth, and by the time, uh,it was really apparent that toyota had disrupted them,it was too late. and so bankruptcy and bailouts were to follow.
now, toyota has been being disrupted over the last many, many years as well. anyone know by whom? [man] tesla.[michael] tesla, interesting. anyone agree? d- do people agree,tesla has been disrupting toyota? you do? they feel like they come in the-from the low end? [audience together] no.[michael] yeah, i don't think so. i, i mean, tesla is a very interesting architectural change of the automobile. but even before tesla,uh, kia and hyundai, right?
the koreans have been coming into this market. they started the low end crummy cars that everyone laughed at. we made fun of...of the koreans' cars. and now 10,15 years after that, uh, they own the sub-compact and compact ends of the market. and now they're winning all the quality awards. and it's interesting, tesla still isn't – just to address it – tesla still isn't making a profit, uh, isn't clear that it's sustainable.
and yes, they're reinventing the architecture of the automobile, which could be,i wouldn't call it disruptive, it could just be a totally new product, much as the iphone was relative to nokia. but if you look at the behaviour of all the big automotive companies, they've certainly got their attention and they certainly all are, uh, pushing out electronic vehicles as well. so let's see what happens there. uh, underneath them,i would expect the chinese and chery,
indians and tata to come up underneath as well. keep an eye out, right?it's where you don't expect it, often is where the...these changes come from. we could keep telling this story. the one point i wanna just make, um, is on...on how do we survive disruption. um, and th- as we've done research,we've seen a couple methods of survival. both of which the deputy minister actually unintentionally, i think, hit upon, um, this morning,
uh, o- or excuse me,during the lunch time talk. an- and for those that weren't there,ju- just briefly, there was one mini computer company that survived, um, and thrived as personal computers,uh, came, uh, to dominate. anyone know who that was? ibm, yeah.ibm, right? and so they... i- ibm was the leaderof the mainframe world with a...a business out of new york.
um, then they set upan independent business in minnesota to do the, uh... uh, mini computers in rochester, minnesota. and then they set up an independent business, uh, down in florida to do the personal computers. and in each and every casethey said, "we have no idea what this personal computer world looks like, but we're just gonna give youthe freedom to rethink who you sell to,how you build it, what's important, what's not.
and don't worry about us here at corporate. you just figure outwhat the right thing is and go get that opportunity 'cause better you disrupt us than someone else do it." and so that principle of autonomy,it doesn't have to be geographic, but that principle of autonomy, freedom from the way we've always done things, from the assumptions of how it's always been, is really, really important,
uh, as you're pioneering something that may be disruptive. the other thing that he said is, um,be the best at something that matters. and, and so this principle,i think, is, um... i'm not gonna go into the whole research here, but, uh, that if, if you really... so, so ikea is a great example of this. ikea's been around for 50, 60 years just minting cash. and yet, all the discountfurniture stores that have come in literally have not disrupted ikea.
and my sense is that ikea is not a discount furniture store. they're a store that helps you furnish this apartment right away today. and they're really goodat designing the entire journey through the entire home of the apartment, right? and they have very easy furniture that they actually, uh,pay the designers to build for them that's easy to custom assemble. they're not heirlooms.they're not trying to be. they've never gone up market.they've never gone down market.
they've just stayed nailing this job over and over again. and so whatever technologythey have to use to continue to deliver on that thing that they do, they just figure out a way to get it done. and so despite all of the changes, wayfair.com and everything else coming out now, uh, uh, in that furniture world,they just keep on rolling. and i think by beingreally excellent in something and saying, like, we'll use whatever it takes
to be excellent at that, um, has really helped sustain their position. so, um,and it's not about a product, right? it's about the actual value you deliver to people in the real world. so we call it "job to be done." just wanted to make that point 'cause i...i think i- it'll be relevant later. but, but i think it's interestingto footnote it since the deputy minister just talked about it.
so interesting questions of where does disruption not apply? 'cause it does not apply in every single industry. um, and the example,uh, i- i- two fold, one, in areas where there is no non-consumption, there isn't typically a lot of disruption. i, i just think the canadian exampleis interesting there as we think about the broader post-secondary landscape, given that, uh,students aren't paying tuition like they are say in the united states,which creates affordability challenges.
and so i... i think how a lot of what i'm talking about, i think it will have huge impacts in canada, but i think it will roll out differently, potentially, um, from how it will roll out in other countries. and then the second thingis that industries that do not have a upwardly scalable technology enabler do not experience disruption. i'll give you an example. historically in the the hotel industry,
hotels have not hada technology core that allowed them to takea low cost value proposition and move up market in a disruptive way. what i mean by that is in the centre circle of hotels, you might f- have the four seasonsor something like that, right? for those of you who've been to four seasons whistler, it's, it's pretty nice. um, marriott maybe we'd say is on the next rung out from that. you'd have, uh, holiday inn came in in the 1950s at the low end.
uh, you'd have maybe motel 6 after that at the really low end, right? something like that. what's interesting about holiday inn,is that if they were disruptive, when they came in the 1950s, the theory of disruptionwould have said they came in with this low, low end value proposition, affordable hotels, and then we would have expected themto start at the low end and get better and better over time
and disrupt four seasons,marriott, whomever. but what's interesting is that, uh,they came in at the low end and have just literally stayed at the low end. they have not budged one bit and, and four seasons certainly has not been disrupted. and our sense isthere's been no technology enabler that allows them to take that low costaccessible value proposition and move up market
without replicatingall of the cost features and business model features of the existing, uh, uh, top end hotels. so if they wanted to be like the four seasons, they would literallyhave to replicate all of the cost features at the four seasons. [man] [indistinct] [michael]ho- hold the thought. you're... you're jumping the next graphic. so, um, [laughs]the, uh, so, so four seasons, right?
th- they would have to replicatethe, uh, concierges, th- the high end spas,the nice restaurants, the people who walk aroundthe swimming pool squirting avion water on your face to keep you cool. those things are expensive it turns out,okay? now, that's changed, right? airbnb has come inin the last several years with a technology enablerthat has fundamentally flipped this on its head.
and now the hotel world is experiencing disruption, right? so higher education, though,looks a lot like this hotel industry. if you think about it,right? so, um, at the centre – i'm gonna use u- united states examples on purpose, okay? you would have,uh, uh, harvard university, um, you know, 1600s in there in the centre, high end. uh, state universities. these are public land grant, uh, institutions in the united states.
you'd have your community colleges maybe as that next rung. in between would be state comprehensive universities, which were supposed to belike polytechnics but have deviated from mission over time in the united states. um, and then the next, uh... a- and so none of this was disruption. you had decentralization,but not disruption. and then my senseis that online learning over the last couple decades
has introduced the,the possibility of disruption in some pretty big ways across this post-secondary landscape. okay?and fundamentally changed it. i do wanna address one thing, though, which is it's not just simply the technology. it's how the technology is used in the m- model that's put around it. and the... the conversationi just wanna have is around moocs. so massive open online courses that started actually in canada.
um, the united statesdoesn't believe that, but it, it did. um, uh, massive open online courses,everyone sorta went nuts in 2012-13, saying this is the disruptive innovation. and my sense is that they're not. um, and so what i've put up here is just the six teststhat i think you can ask yourself to say is something disruptive or not. and the first question isis the innovation targeting people who are non-consum- consumers
or overserved by existing products or services? there i would say the moocs get a check, okay? typically, they've been serving peoplewho already had a post-secondary degree who would not go back for another,okay? the second one is, uh, is the innovation not as goodas the existing products as judged by historical measures of performance? clearly, massive open online courses get a check there as well. they were not nearlyas interactive or good
as a traditional, uh, polytechnic college/university experience. um, sorry, is th- the third,is the innovation simpler to use, more convenient,or more affordable? they were free so they-and more convenient. they pass that test. fourth, is the technology enabler, can they- can it carry the new value proposition up market? here's an interesting question on moocs,which is –
i'm gonna be somewhat provocative here – yes, they were powered by online learning, but because,in most cases, the moocs were dependent uponfaculty members at research institutions that i would argue know very little about teaching and learning, no matter what data these courses generated, the platformswere unable to use the data to actually improvethe learning experience in any meaningful way.
and so i thinkthey actually stripped out their ability to have a...a technology enabler that truly allowed it to go up market, 'cause from my way of thinking, it's really online learning combinedwith the advances in learning sciences that constitutes that up market driver. and i, i think they, they basically, uh, separated that possibilityfrom themselves. the fifth one,is the technology paired
with a business model innovation that allows it to be sustainable? moocs by their definition had no business model because they were free. so st- they strike-out there. and then the third one, are existing providers at the outset motivated to ignore the new innovation? right? dec was basically, like,they would look at the personal computer but it never made sense for them to do it. harvard, standford, mit, et cetera,they're the ones pioneering moocs.
so i think they strike out on this end as well, as... as strictly understood. now, that said, i think online learningis ushering in a very disruptive phase that has a lot of exciting opportunities. and the first one i wanna t- i wanna talk aboutthree distinct value propositions that i think are very exciting that all of youshould be thinking about pulling into
the learning environmentsyou're creating of the future to match employer needs as we go forward. the first one is personalization. you're hearing a lot about this from people like mark zuckerberg now, who sort of got the memo,the opportunity. but my senseis that personalization is so critical because all students have different learning needs at different times. some people learn relatively quickly for a particular concept.
other people learn more slowly and struggle with a concept, really wrestling with it. and the reason for thisis we all have different working memory capacities, literally the aptitudesin the front of our brains to absorb information in active memory and manipulate it. and we all have different long-term memory. literally different background experiences, knowledge that we bring to a given learning event,
which simply meansthat if i've used the phrase disruptive innovation, for example,without giving context, and you've heard it in an article that misproperly, uh, talked about it, improperly talked about it, then the human mind, naturally,will glom on to its misconception and obsess over that, even as the point of the lesson or whatever else goes on. and so because of these huge differences, if the goal is to optimize every student's learning,
which historically it was not for, for much of education, but if that is the goal, then we need a system that can personalize for these difference. but,but our current education system was literally modeled after the factory ideals. i- in essence, we have a system that was fixed time, variable learning. we would batch students up in what we call classrooms – much as i have forced youto all come together today in the lecture hall – uh, deliver content.
we would test and assess. and then students would, uh,progress to the next grade, body, subject, and material,or whatnot, regardless of what they had mastered and only receive the results afterward. and you hear a lot about data driven decision making, once again, in education. the research is actually unambiguously clear on this point. when you use data in a systemin which students and teachers have no ability to take that data and actually do anything with it,
it's not actionable, it's incredibly demotivating to the experience and to learning, okay? you contrast that- sorry, excuse me. what this creates,quite simply, the system is what educators call the swiss cheese problem. all students develop holes in their learning. and the big challenge for you as a faculty member or a teacher with many students in front of you is you have no idea which students have which holes.
you just know that they all have some holes, okay? and it makes it a very impossible value pr- uh, proposition to reach them all. now you contrast this with what we call a competency based learning system, where the learning is fixed and time is the variable. so we still offer learning experiences for students. we still test and assess because testing and assessment is a critical part of learning.
but now we use this to get real-time or interactive feedback, which informswhat students do next. and students only move on once they've truly mastered the material, okay? you contrast that,that's a pretty big shift in the, in the fundamental model underlying. and this is a definition of what high qualitycompetency based learning is from competencyworks.
the basic idea is students advance upon mastery. the only pointthat i wanna bring up here is we're not just talking about basic knowledge, okay? i'm not just talking about memorization, but also the ability to actually apply it. what can you actually do – the skills, and dispositions, and application of knowledge – what can you actually do with it, uh, which has huge,uh, uh, implications
and potential for the partnerships with industry partners, okay? now what's really neatabout online learning or blended learning online,you know, blending into the campus, uh, against this,is by being inherently modular, i can move at the unique path and pacethat makes sense for my learning and all of you can learn itat the unique paths and paces that make sense for your learning, and we can have this very individualizedor personalized experience that both moves us into individual activities when it makes sense
and then into experiential oneswhen that makes sense so we can actually apply, uh, information an- and knowledge and projects. creates huge capacity in addition for students to actually own their learning, to start to build ownership over,"what do i have to do to be successful to master that concept in a competency based environment?" and there's huge technology advances right now, such as adaptive learningand so forth
that is leveraging data in this world to make it actually actionable, whether it's recommending the next learning activity for the learner or the teacher, or, uh, actually pointing you to it in a more directed way. and similarly, we're seeinghuge advances in the technology itself just as you would expect any disruptive innovation to do. from game based learning,to simulations, to the abilities to communicate online,to content becoming far more engaging, content shifting, quite frankly,to mobile phones,
the ability to have synchronous,asynchronous, and other experiences. we're seeing huge advances right nowin this field that really is driving this forward in some pretty exciting ways toward personalizing. and it brings up a very key question, which is what's the best useof face to face time as we're able to personalize learning in this way? and i would submit it's not doing what i'm doing right now, which is lecturing,
but instead thinking about the faculty member as a mentor, a learning coach, a facilitator of rich socratic discussions or deep projects and experiences, uh, tutoring students one on one or in small groups with where they get stuck, evaluating learning in much richer, deeper ways, counselling students about a lotof the non-academic problems that may be tripping them upor helping them find what really are your passions and what do you want to do, uh, as you leave these institutions?
and we're seeinga lot of interesting online competency based universities emerge, like western governors university, southern new hampshire's college for america and others that are really r- thinking, "how do we disaggregate the role of the faculty member to think really around a team of peoplethat support, uh, learners?" so we may have content experts,mentors and learning coaches, assessment specialists,uh, instructional designers,
even practitioners who we actually take from industry, they continue to hold a jobbut are actually involved in giving some of the creditsand competencies of the course itself in much more intermixed,active ways. and the last point about this is that this disaggregation, i think,can be really important because online learning is not inherently better, as you can hear from my comments, right? and if you just simply take a face to face experience, uh, online...
so this is an example from byu idaho, where you can seeout of a six point scale the average was 5.6, roughly a bell curve of student engagement in learning. um, and when they went online, the course qualityactually initially declined because the faculty membersdidn't know how to do instructional design in this new medium and experience. adding in an ex-an instructional designer
boosted the quality of the course and really tightened the bell curve around the student experiences. okay? what's interestingabout that, though, as well is that you did lop off the really high end experiences. like the best of online could not replicate the best of face to face. that may stay that way for a long, long, long time, okay? i'm not even sure it'll ever change, right? the best in person small group experience.
but the point isfor the majority of learners who don't always get that benefit of that in-person experience, it greatly improved their learning on average, okay? so really worth thinking about that. and the second thing is it didis access and equity. and what i mean by that is, um, regardless of which college you attended, you could have accessto the best courses at any college around,uh, uh, say in canada, right?
no longer is geography a barrier. and then the last thing that people are using this for is cost control. meaning the cost of, of... the underlying expendituresof colleges have gone up a lot over, over recent years. and the question you can start to ask yourself is, "what do we have to uniquely do in person, and what can we leverageonline learning so that we can stem the rate of increase of that cost?" okay?
put another way, though, i think, that's maybe more provocative as well is, the best wayto personalize learning in the past was to have a tutor for every single student. that's just been prohibitively expensive, except for those at the very, very high end. how can we leverage online learning to provide that personal experiencethat only a tutor could at a cost that we can actually afford?
i think it's a huge opportunity as a result. now you hear a lot about unbundling come-coming to post-secondary education. uh, an- and this is wherei wanna start to shift from what is possiblein the pedagogy to some of the developments that areactually happening on the ground. and, and i'm gonna push through the theory for a moment, just for time's sake, so we can get to more questions and answers.
but- well, questions anyway. we'll see if i give answers. but, um, basically,in every industry, what you see is that the early products and services, in an effortto become good enough such that customers will want to use them, they have to, basically, wrap their hands around the whole problem, if you will, and build what is a very proprietary,interdependent architecture.
meaning the way one part works and functions, uh, impacts the way another part works and functions, and vice versa, in unpredictable ways. so if you wanna optimize the performanceof those early products and services, you've gotta wrap your hands aroundthe whole in- enterprise so you can be making those adjustments, uh, as you're, as you're building the future, in essence. okay? now, uh, ibm mainframeswould be a classic example of a proprietary interdependent architecture.
to make the first pur- uh,the first computers good enough for people to use them, ibm couldn't just assemble and sell the mainframes. they also had to build the logic circuitry, the core memory, all the parts and functions inside of those mainframes to optimize that performance,okay? there's a trade-off, though,to interdependent architectures. and that is interdependent architectures, while they maximize raw functionality,
there's- uh, uh,customization in that world is prohibitively expensive. and what i mean by thatis microsoft windows is an intricately interdependent architecture. if you were to just go in and say, "i want my customized version of microsoft windows," and just delete ten lines of codeat random that you did not particularly like, the whole operating system would crash.
and not just because it's microsoft windows, but because those ten lines of code interact in very intricatelyinterdependent ways with the rest of the code, such that if you wanted your own customized version, you'd have to actually re-architect the entire thing, which would cost you, in essence,in excess of 500 million dollars, right? now you contrast thiswith a modular architecture where the parts, uh, fit together
in very well understood and defined ways. there's standard interfaces between them, such that parts c- parts can be plug and play compatible, okay? this optimizes, uh, affordib-affordable customization. there's a trade off in raw performance, but you can quickly assembledifferent parts of a system to, uh, to get a very affordably, uh, produced,customized, uh, application. so you- dell personal computer,uh, in the 1990s
would be the obvious counter example to the ibm mainframes. where,for those of you who remember, if you peeled the cover off an ibm,uh, excuse me, a dell personal computer, you'd see that they didn't make any of the parts inside. and what that enabled you to do as a customer, was jump on the dell website and just quickly say,i want this much memory, i want this type of seagate drive,this type of monitor, this type of processor,this much speed, et cetera,
and they would quickly just snap these parts together, that fit togetherin very well understood ways and ship you out an affordable,uh, uh, desktop computer, okay? um, now, what's interestingis that general purpose products tend to get disruptedon a job by job basis as they start to overshoot and we can modularize the components. so this, this afternoon,or, excuse me, at lunch, we heard the deputy ministertalk about the disruption of newspapers. and indeed,newspapers were disrupted,
um, but the reality isthat we hired newspapers for many different jobs in our lives, not simply to become well informed, but also to, um, unload stuff that we no longer wanted, to find and buy cars,to sell or buy homes, uh, to find the right job, to kill commuting time productively in mass transit, on, and on, and on. and it wasn't just google and blogs,therefore, that disrupted newspapers,
but it was those things plus,as the deputy minister said, craig's list, uh, autotrader.com,realtor.com, monster.com, the, uh, metro, uh, uh,the metro newspapers that some of you may rememberin new york city that all of a sudden came along and were only like ten pages with clipped articles, but were perfect for the length of a subway ride, uh, in those places. um, all of these things together
conspire to unbundle and disrupt newspapers, okay? and what's interesting is,i would say, the unwind at the end of the day job,or that sunday newspaper whatever else, that actually still has somewhat of a market, um, and is still, sorta,kickin' along, um, even, even as we've seenlots of disruption in other parts of that,uh, enterprise, which is really gutted that newspaper world. similarly, harvard business school has been feeling this pressure.
so the two year mba has gone up in priceyear, over year, over year to now, it's excess of 150,000 dollars for the two year mba. and there's onlya limited number of employers that can actually hire people who need to make a certain amount of money to repay their loans, uh, for it to be able to...to go there. so harvard mbas don't really go to operating companies any more. they all go to vc jobs and...and google and places like that
where they hope that they can make, uh, a million dollars and repay these things. and underneath them,you would say there's been a limited disruption from part-time mbasand online garbage of course. but the real big disruption is actually occurring, uh, in that area of non-consumption in the outer circlesamong corporate universities that have been popping up. and what i mean by thatis there's lots of reasons
you could hire business education,more broadly speaking. and corporate universitieshave started at the bottom of the stack and gotten better and better over time. so from help me solve just this simple little problem on the spot, and compliance issues,and things like that, to the skills to become a great general manager. give me the credentials that i need t-uh, to get the next job. help me even switch careers. and you start to see these things going up market.
and it's not the mba that directly competes with these things, but harvard'sexecutive education program is actually where they make all of their money to support the mba program, which,hard to believe at 150,000 dollars, is actually subsidized, um,by, by executive education. and so as a result of this,you're starting to see that a lot of business educationis at risk as, as corporations not satisfiedwith the quality of exec ed programs
that these institutions are creating for them, and the specificity with whichthey're matching their needs are themselves integrating backwards to do the training themselves. and so for a long time,you saw this integration, this rise of the corporate university, things like motorola university and so forth. and what's interesting,i would say, is over the last, maybe,ten years, it's been flipping back to where corporations are saying,
"we don't really wanna do the training ourselves." and so they've been creatingthese targeted partnerships with various universities and, uh, polytechnics, and... and colleges,and so forth. so in the united states,bellevue university, uh, has a-does all the continuing education for the mid-level managers at home depot, and verizon,and places like that. and, uh, walmart has a partnership
with american public university,for example. [coughs] all that to say is i think that createsa lot of opportunities, uh, for polytechnics to partner directly with industry. but it also is the case that all these companies that i've just put behind me,these new kids on the block, are coming in this marketplace to try to do that education job themselves. and i'll, i'll end here by just going through
three slides about some of these new players, and some thoughts about this. the first is these are the, sorta,threatening ones, i would say. udacity and udemystarted in, sorta, this mooc space but have quicklypivoted away from moocs to be online learning providersthat work with industry practitioners to build very specific coursesfor the skill sets that would be employees need, and then give micro-credentials to help these people get hired
by the industry, uh, themselves. udacity,just as an example, works directly with at&t,google, facebook, and they've set up,what i think of as, sort of an alternativeaccrediting body called the online- excuse me,the open education alliance that basically has these employers blessing the education coming from udacity, which gives it a certain, uh, uh,credibility, if you will,
for a student wondering,"where do i get access, uh, to skills that will allow me get in,get into these, uh, it industries?" lynda.com and,and linkedin, we heard about, uh, again,from the deputy minister earlier. uh, these are partnershipsthat employers are quite literally taking in to their existing companies to continue to skill up their existing workforce, where before,they might have had to send these people back out into a, uh,a polytechnic or other experience
for a year master's or something like that. um, dev bootcamp and general assemblyare- represent, sort of the, the beginning, i would say,of these coding bootcamps that are emerging across the, uh,a... across the world right now. they started with coding. ten week basically experiences to make you a viable coder,to get you a job in industry. general assembly will claim that it hassomething like a 98 or 99 percent placement rate into industry.
there's, maybe, seven or eight of these,k- uh, bootcamps that are now expanding past just basic coding and it jobsand skill sets to think much more broadly about project management, in particular, verticals and so forth. and i thinkyou're gonna see these experiences, these sort of ten week sprints that create a very targeted credential targeted to particular industry. you're gonna see these things increase.
and they're really blended experiences. they leverage online learning for the learning. but they do it in coworking spaces where these studentsget unbelievable ability to network with other students,solve real problems and experiences, and then networkwith other employers who are actuallyoften leasing space outta these coworking spaces as, as well. which both improves the practicality of the education,
and it also improves the chancesof getting a job on the other end as you can pro- uh,show your utility with these employers as your networking. learnup is a really interesting new startup out of san francisco, a few years, uh, old. the, uh, founder of it, uh, she spent six monthsin unemployment lines tying to understand why these people were unemployed, and why the work study programs
that, in the united states,the federal government was providing, was not helping them get jobs, and realized that there wasa huge mismatch among what entry level, uh, in many cases,retail jobs and so forth wanted, uh, and what the training was actually preparing them for, and created online programs to address that gap. and now, has direct partnershipswith companies like safeway, and staples,and so forth
to train up, uh, uh,literally thousands and thousands of people for these entry level jobs. you can bet that she'll go up market, uh, the founderwill go up market over time, uh, and won't just be doing entry level. uh, the guild is similarly,uh, focused on mid- um, uh, quote/unquote middle skills jobs. whether it's, uh,health nurse practitioners, it people in health industries,and things like that
for whichthere's a great upward mobility once you get started in the industry. so those are some of the threats that i think are emerging to these education. some of the opportunitiesis that there's a corresponding whole set of new players emerging that are exs- their sole existenceis to help higher education, uh, really make these innovationsand do a lot of the things that we talked about in the first half of the talk. so to you academic partnerships,for example,
represented the firstof the online program managers, opms, that would partnerwith, uh, colleges to help them move programs online. uh, noodle partners, we're, we're,full disclosure, i'm a board member, has come into the marketmore recently and said rather than take 40 percent or 50 percent of your revenues, as we do that with you,we'll act much more like a dell and basically help youcustom assemble the different parts that you wantfrom out in the marketplace
to build, uh,an affordable online program or to take a campus program and start to, uh, uh, blend it, uh, in ways that are useful for what you're trying to get done. intellus learning, uh, is one of these partners that it might work with. where intellus basically is a company that, uh, has a semantics search engine. and so it can take a faculty member's learning objectives from their course, comb through eleven repositories of open content, all the digital resources that a university might license,
and match a series of, of,basically through a search engine, of content objects that a, a faculty member might use, and then go through and chooseto align with those course objectives to quickly build online or digital courses. and then,can monitor the student engagement on the back end of that to see what's actually working or not. fidelis education is much more concernedwith the learning relationships. new company called the learningrelationship management company that's basically, think of itlike a facebook for mentorship
and putting teams around your learners, basically under the hypothesis that it's not just what you learn,but who you know, an- and how you help buildyour networks at, at colleges that really get you ahead in life, and really help colleges put supports around their learners to help g- get these things done. burning glass technologiesis something that is both fuelling the people that are trying to upset and threaten, uh, colleges,
but also help fuelling colleges themselves. i know that in, in canada,a big question is labour market informationand getting real time access to it. this is effectively what burning glass does. they literally absorb the world's job postings and, uh, match it upwith educational programs to help understand what educational programs are training people for certain,uh, job openings and how you actually, what competencies underlying it do you need to build for?
so as you think aboutnew program creation or aligning programs to particular job needs, uh, they're a huge engine underlying that and helping people. and then smartly i put up herebecause my sense is that, uh, the us, and canada, and europehave been very obsessed over online learningon the desktop and not thinking as muchabout how this is gonna change as it moves to the mobile form factor that you all carry around with you. uh, but in developing countries in particular,
this is gonna be a highly disruptive trend. and it will come here as well. and smartly is probablythe most engaging thing i've personally ever learned on,actually, period. uh, it's the fastest, most efficient way to learn that i've experienced. and it's not, maybe, you know,deep learning, where you'd wanna get into and experience or a project, but it's ideally bo- built for a mobile form factor. and if you can imagine that delivering the basic knowledge of a course,
and then using the faculty membersat a polytechnic to actually do the experiential learningand, and the real meat of a course that separates a graduate, uh,from a polytechnic, from just someone who's read a book. i- you can really imaginesome pretty exciting ways, i think, uh, to partner and, and create new pedagogical experiences. and they just partnered with georgetown university, uh, to do that for their, uh,mba program. so i think that there's gonna be some pretty interesting things that emerge.
last thought, and then, hopefully,we'll have a couple minutes for q and a. which is thati think colleges and universities across, uh, uh,the world right now are doing a lot of this interesting disruptive innovation themselves. and so i've putjust two traditional, uh, what you would,they're called universities, but they're more the equivalent of a polytechnic – uh, southern new hampshire,northern arizona university in the united states –
that really are pioneering these online competency based approaches. and in each and every case, they've done soby creating that autonomy to really help faculty members to have the space to rethinkwhat teaching and learning can and should look like for this new era. and they're leveraging,and actually, i think, probably among the most successful innovators in this field. and so the new kids in the block,as far as i'm concerned,
don't have to be thesepeople from silicon valley that have never thought about education until they got outta their jobthat was helping them increase, uh, the clicks on,on an advertisement. but instead,all the expertise that resides, uh, among faculty membersat the polytechnics that have been thinking deeply about how you align, uh, experienceswith employer needs and really thinking about how do we create these opportunities.
from my way of thinking,it's just a huge opportunity to innovate and leverage that-those great resources if you can createthe right structures to take these technologies,and pedagogies, and things that we're learningabout how we learn to really just accelerate what you've been doing already and do it even better. so i think the opportunity right now is enormous for innovation. and i'm excited to once again be at humber,
uh, uh, t- to talk about this, and hopefully we gotta couple minutes for q and a? [woman] absolutely.[michael] so thank you very much. appreciate it. [nobina robinson] hello everyone.my name is nobina robinson. i'm ceo of polytechnics canada. welcome to the wider groupand participants of our annual conference here at humber. um, it's going to be my job to moderate a few q and a's,
and then say thank you to michael horn. there are two mics down here. um, with this many faculty and educators in the room, i do believe that there must be something that struck a chord. though i have to tell you, michael,we've had people working, and they left the hotel at 7:15. so you might be standing between them and some drink. but, um, uh, let me see if there are any questions for michael? [michael] questions or pushback.[nobina] yes, here we go.
[claude brulã©] thank you.claude brulã©, algonquin college. um, i wonder if we can speakonly about higher ed when really education is a continuum from birth, uh, and if you believe in lifelong learning, really forever. um, so talking about disruption only in higher ed, i wonder if we should betalking about disruption in elementary and secondarybecause... the children we inherit,to a large extent, come to us having gone throughtwo other stages of learning.
and if there's no disruption in their education, what can we hope to achieve disrupting the third, or tertiary level? [michael] terrific question.so, um, and, and i agree with you. i think, uh,arbitrarily dividing the world, uh, elementary, secondary,post-secondary, et cetera, is a category error at the end of the day. and... and even thinking about colleges, this experiencewe go to for a couple years and never again return to
or something like thatis an error as well because really, i think,lifelong learning is our journey as we continue to, uh,seek fulfilling lives and also continue to stay relevant for the workforce in both strands. so entirely agree with the question. uh, what,what you don't know about me is i spendabout 40 or 50 percent of my life thinking about the k-12, uh, world,and, um, there's rampant disruption occurring, uh, in the way we teach and learn.
and i spend a lot of time,actually in canada, uh, talking to schools about that as well. i think it will look different. whereas, um, you're actuallyseeing new institutions emerge in many cases at the post-secondary level, most of the disruption in-within developed countries is occurring of the classroom itself. and so in...in blended learning environments... in the united states,for example, right now,
75 percent of school districts are doing blended learning. um, we estimateroughly nine or ten million students are having at least part of their day impacted by this. uh, and policy is wrestling to try to move into a competency based world. we are not there by any means. there's a new book, though, uh,"the end of average" by todd rose, um, that i'd highly recommend to people, um, that i think will further pushpolicy makers in canada and the us
to start thinking about this world. and, uh, there's somepretty exciting experiments in vermont, and new hampshire,and maine around moving to competency based environments. i, i think the push is gonna be from both sides. so industry, i think,and colleges are gonna be pushing us to innovate,um, because they can really define, sort of, what the target is in some ways, which causes us to really think abouthow do we educate everyone
for this knowledge economy? um, and then,on the bottom end up, you know,kids entering kindergarten, for example, who already know their numeracy and can read in three languages 'cause they learned it from an ipad are going to beg the questionof what is the teacher doing teaching them the letter a again? um, and i think a lot of the adhdand stuff like that that gets diagnosed might, you know, there might be,there might be a connection.
um, and so once you've experienced that, i think it's gonna have a ripple effect up as well. so i think it's gonna come from both...both directions and will be... disruptive in a different sense of the word as a result. yeah.it's a great question. [nobina]another question? how nice to see you.thank you for coming. [man]i guess i have two questions. one, one, um, the keyto clayton's disruption analysis
is that the disruptor has a different customer base- [michael]yes. [man]...uh, from the incumbent. and then as the functionality for the...the lower customer base improves, then the others, um, and who's the customer in the higher education one? and i think it's moving faster in the usbecause it costs more, which i think you alluded to. so that's my first question.if you could just talk to that.
and the second,have you applied your analysis to the policy world? in canada, uh, our federal government's writing a new innovation strategy. they want to improve the innovation economy. they're just starting to wake upto the importance of polytechnics and colleges. they've been pumpingbillions of dollars in universities,getting nowhere with it. um, have you, have you looked atthat whole policy question
and the disruption that may or may not happen, and if it can't happen,why? [michael] yeah, yeah, a great, both great questions. so on the first one, um, yes. so, uh, clayton's-the... the theory very much depends on finding this non-consumption,right? people who've been locked out of the market, not because they're bored, but because they literally can't afford or access, right? um, and so that can be non-consuming contexts.
and the example i give on that is, um, mobile phones are deeply disruptive to laptops, not because a lot of us didn't have access to computers, per se, but because there are contextsin our lives where we were unable to have that communication. and that looks equally unappealing,often, to an incumbent, who thinks university, for example,a degree is four years. that's what a degree i-it's four years. we defined it as four years,right?
um, and so that looks unattractive, which probably explains the second point as well to a degree. um... so the price piece,i think, is a reason why in the united states,you're right, it's happening faster. and it's why i wonder, you know,will it actually happen with new entrants in canada or will it be the polytechnics and others that actually lead this? i think that's a very plausible scenario.
the one question i would have,and this relates to your second one, is that a lot of times,policy makers err in thinking about cost just as the cost to student rather in the-rather than the total cost. and the reason i say that is,like, if you look in europe, um, the- more broadly, the cost to educate students has gone up over time. in, in industries without disruption, cost tends to increase faster than inflation.
and, um, because european governmentshave not been able to continue to, uh, fund their public, uh, universities at that rate over time... you know, germany 150 years ago was literally, you know, if you looked at the top ten universities, they were eight or nine of them,right? now you look,germany, like, its h- highest is maybe number 50 or something like that. oxford and cambridge are not what they once were.
and so i think it's importantto be thinking more holistically about expenditures. um, and that's why i think a lot of times in the united states, i... i'll be direct here, i thinkthe free community college movement, that's popping up in the united states, would actually havea very detrimental impact, um, on innovation in that sector because it would ignore the factthat actually community colleges
cost four or five times more than what tuition is in many of those environments. so i, i don't know exactly how th-i haven't thought about exactly how that plays out in canadian landscape. but i think it's importantto think about that overall piece, uh, 'cause governments are the funder- uh, the customer in some ways. last point on the second question,and then take the last one, i guess. um, yeah, we've been thinking a lot about policy.
uh, our- you know,it's tricky. i thought the deputy ministerdid a good job today of saying governments don't create disruption, um, but they can create, maybe,enabling conditions that help foster productive, um,uh, dollars to go to productive places. and i... i tend to think that when we understand the outcomes that we want, and we fund on outcomesrather than inputs, and, you know,the number of libraries, and books, and phds that there have to be as opposed to just saying, like,
"hey, we want students to get great jobsand do great things in society." um, you get more innovation when you fund the ladder. um, and so the more you can create opportunities, i think,to think about the outcomes you want as opposed toa university looks like this and therefore post-secondary all looks like this, which i think is what the government probably suffers from, um, uh, the better off you are,i think, as a sector. so yeah.
[man] thanks.hopefully this question carries on right where that one was. you made the great pointabout the hotel market for a long time not being disrupteduntil a sufficient technology driver, airbnb,totally flips it. in the beginning of some of the work that clayton christensen and henry eyering did on the innovative university, they talk about how come these things don't disrupt? and partly,it's because the customers,
or at least the governments that own them, don't let them die. we heard eloquently from the deputy minister at lunch. don't expect that these things will be allowed to die. where do you see the technologicalflipping point is where the new disruptive models will actually cause that cratering to occur? [michael] yeah.so, so i don't know completely. i think it's an interesting question. in, in the united states context,
i think the small, private liberal arts colleges, for example, um, they're verypart of those market forces and will, you know, even the sweet briar college, for example, for those of you who don't know,small, private art, uh, private liberal arts college in virginiathat served women, effectively went out of business,only to be resuscitated by alumni who wanted it to stay in business. and i would say very unclear that it will still be in business ten years from now.
um, like the market forces, i think,are still sticky there. what's different, i think,about higher education from, uh, a lot of the other sectors clayton has studied is that alumni, in many ways,are the ongoing customers of an experiencebecause of the social and network value it continues to accrue to them. so i have a very deep interestin harvard business school not being disruptedbecause it will r- reflect negatively on my i- right, ability to, uh,be gainfully employed and so forth.
so i think that is a slowing effect that is not necessarily unique, but or... or, uh, kills it,but i think it greatly slows it down such that the flip occurs much,over much longer time horizons. to the broader point on publics then, i think that's right. it's not clear to methat a lot of these institutions go out of business, but more that they disrupt class rather than disrupt the school itself. and so the disruption,the unit of disruption might be in the waywe do teaching and learning
as opposed to the institution, uh,disappearing or something like that. last thought on that,which is that disruption isn't a theory of life or death, right? it's a theory of beingat the top of your game versus being middling,um, in some ways. um... laughter. so the only reason i say thatis 'cause i think a lot of the people sorta think like, "oh,you're disrupted, and then you die." a lot of those companies hang around.
i mean gm's still here. they're just not really that great. um, uh, doesn't mean they weren't-the disruption didn't happen to them. and so, you know, clayton's workgot attacked a few years ago in the new yorker with an articleby jill lepore. and i think she made a huge error in so doing of saying like,"well, you know, this business is still around." that's not evidenceof the force of disruption or not
impacting a, a sector. and in a- all that to say,i think, y- you know,had it been a technological enabler, we would have called what happenedin the german universities over the last 150 years,you know, things do change in higher education, even if institutions perpetuate. so i think teaching and learning,when we come back here in 15 years, will look very different,
even though i expect humberto still be here and... and thriving, so. [nobina] i have a question. because there are people here who aren't educators, but people here who represent organizations of employers. you mentioned burning glass.[michael] yeah. [nobina] um, and you mentionedlabour market information, and some people know that that's a hobby horse of mine. doe- in the us,is burning glass seen
as a credible source of lmi by government policy makers? by parents? [michael]by government? no. [nobina] by parents?by guiding- guidance counsellors? [michael] yeah.so... so let me answer the question. parents and, um,and guidance counsellors don't think about the questionyou just asked at all in the united states. they don't actually think aboutlabour market information at all.
so they wouldn't even know how to think about it. they're certainly not lurking at the bureau of labour statistics from the united states government. um, nor are they looking at burning glass, but burning glass isn't makingthat information public to those audiences either. they are working directly with post secondary institutions and employerswho find it way more useful than what the federal government has been cranking out.
so, yes – does the federal government acknowledge it? no. but i wouldn't expect them to. um, and so i-my, my sense of it is these were entrepreneurs who said, "we can't wait forever for the government to give us the information we need. we need to somehowseed a partner that does it for us'cause, god, we need this information." [nobina] yeah, we, we may find ourselvesin a similar position here in canada.
i think. it's a conversation that's only just getting going. uh, well folks,on behalf of polytechnics canada, and our host college here,humber, and everyone in attendance, i'd like to, uh, thank michael for sharing so many insights with us. i think you've got usthinking about the, uh,potential disruptive innovations that may be heading to our educational space. it was also striking to considerhow many of the disruptions
that you mentioned, uh,when you look at a canadian context, were either initiated by polytechnics or we are early adopters of them. so i think there's something,but- not about resting on our laurels, but we can feel encouraged. and that was the"learning that works" theme that we've, sort of, i can hope we've had some learning, i know we've worked very hard, and i'm really glad, michael,for your insights. we have a few gifts to say thank you.
a... a nice innovation from a humber industrial design student,which you'll read about. his name is lee renshaw,and he's very entrepreneurial. and a few little canadian gifts for you to take back to boston. everyone, please join me in thanking michael horn. and now, uh, we turn, uh,to the easy part our- of our event,the networking, the mingling, uh,with our many student entrepreneurs who have now setup, uh,
there's quite an entrepreneurial alley for you to see. i would like to ask, uh,or point out, the, the- we have someone here,a sponsor, gina van dalen of itac, the information technology association of canada. um, she has a table out there. uh, she's been very kind to sponsor, uh, parts of our event, uh, over the la-today and tomorrow. and if you would like to know more
about the business technology management program, please see gina,she's right there. um, for those of you who've been here all day, let's go back to the new building,the learning resource commons, and there's lots to drink and eat. and in about an hour,we should, uh, there's no snow, so we should get, uh,easy landing at pearson. and some words to us from the parliamentary secretary to the minister of science.
for those of you who've just joined us, student ambassadors will take you to where the drink is. and the plan is thatthere will be a bus going back to the hotel at 7:15 sharp. if you need to see a ta-if you need a taxi, please see our team, and we'll find you to the information desk. and for our gta friends, it'll be home before 9:00,i hope.
thank you very much.see you for drinks.