THE CHANGE IMPERATIVE: why higher education institutions need to embrace disruption.

DISRUPTION, THEREFORE "CHANGE" IS THE NEW PRINCIPLE ON WHICH UNIVERSITIES MUST EMBRACE TO BE COMPETITIVE IN TODAY'S WORLD.

Stepping out of the comfort zone

Years ago, personal, professional and business stability came from the absence of movement and feeling comfortable in a specific situation, the now-famous "comfort zone".

Today, personal, professional and business stability comes precisely from leaving that comfort zone and accepting change and constant evolution as the basic principles that should govern our lives. I will say, it is like riding a bicycle: "we will only achieve stability and balance by moving, by moving forward and by pedalling". Depending on the context, the cadence of pedalling will vary to ensure precisely that stability, but as it happens in a bicycle, if you don't pedal you lose stability and you will fall over.

Change and transformation can be vertigo-inducing, uncomfortable and somewhat unsettling, but at the same time very stimulating. Change, although it brings uncertainty, opens the door to new principles, to new opportunities to discover new blue oceans. Change in itself is a challenge, and for that reason, it must become a maxim and be assumed as a personal and corporate principle in any company and also at any university.

Strategy as the basis for change

This much-needed change cannot and should not occur spontaneously or improvised; it must be accompanied by a strategy. A strategy that allows us to foresee the future of the market, and this is very difficult. There is only one objective factor on which we can rely to recognise our environment and anticipate the future, "data". The use of data and "data management" is essential for companies and also for universities when it comes to making decisions based on objective data, avoiding "subjective management" based on perceptions of personal beliefs, and carrying out transformations in the short, medium or long term.

In this sense, there are two models that can help a company to bring about truly disruptive changes in its sector and even in society: the internal and external disruption model but also a third one, the hybrid model, that becomes a result of the first two models.

The internal disruption (change) model

A classic example of the internal disruption model is Apple. Historically a computer company, it reinvented the technology sector, changed the cell phone paradigm and transformed its own business strategy with the iPhone. The change was generated from within the company that knew how to leave its natural comfort zone (computers) and established a specific type of team work that I like to call Ocean's Eleven: Intra-entrepreneurs lead the processes of change with some of the virtues of the entrepreneur (perseverance, creativity, vision of the future, etc.) in a startup model, but within the company.

In the world of higher education, we also have very good examples of this internal disruption process. The origin and history of classic universities, many of them centuries old, were strongly rooted in their campuses and classrooms, with a teaching model in which a professor transmitted his knowledge in a "master class" format. Some of these universities and business schools have managed to get out of their comfort zone and reinvent themselves in their teaching model, changing to a virtual model, without campuses, without physical classrooms, in which the learning process is no longer masterly but a synchronous and asynchronous learning journey. A good example could be Esade Business School, with its academic unit of virtual programs Esade InOn Programmes.

The external disruption (change) model

On the other hand, there is the external disruption model. In this sense, Tesla or Google are two clear examples in the autonomous automotive sector. They are two technology companies that, as of today, have set out to transform the automotive sector. It is curious to see how the major disruptions in this sector are not due to the "usual suspects" (BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Honda...), but to technology companies outside the sector, such as those mentioned above.

In this sense, the key is the information available in the market, but also knowing how each company is using data management to generate the knowledge that leads to change.

In the higher education industry, we also have examples of external disruption models, in which companies from other sectors have entered the industry, generating disruption from outside as new players, without historical and a priori academic credibility – but at the same time without the legacies and burdens of the usual players in that industry. Good examples of this disruption are for example Singularity University formed by Google and NASA. Another good example is the Californian company Coursera, one of the leading education organisations in the field of Moocs (Massive Open Online Courses) and we also have a good European example with The LIS (The London Interdisciplinary School).

The hybrid disruption (change) model

In the higher education industry, as in other industries, we may have a third model, the hybrid disruption (change) model. Instead of breaking into the market as a new player for themselves, as we saw in the case of Coursera or Singularity, external disruptors in the education industry break in positively as an intra-organisational partner, being the tool of change and disruption from outside the classical universities. A very good example of this model is Global Alumni, an EdTech born 5 years ago with the purpose of accelerating the disruption and the necessary change in the main classic universities of world reference. They disrupt and innovate as an intra-organisational partner in their areas of online education by creating the virtual programs with the university professors, doing the marketing and recruitment with the university standards and providing a solid technology base as well as online delivery methodology process. If universities were to change all of this on their own, it would be difficult for them to do it at the speed and new standards that the market requires due to their own legacy.

We have a multitude of new players that are re-inventing day by day the present and future of higher education, both at individual and corporate level. This new players take as a starting point the new needs and the new environment, such as the impact of Covid in the workplace, the LifeLong Learning needs, the 4.0 economy and its impact at the the automation of jobs, the new professions that are being created continuously and those that do not yet exist. A host of new rules of the game, that only with a vision open to change, will be able to face both, the historical universities, through internal disruption models and highly leveraged on technology, as well as these new disruptive players, most of them “digital natives companies”.

Change is an opportunity

More and more universities are seeing change as an opportunity. The technological revolution has reinvented jobs and generated new business models opportunities. This change inevitably implies transforming oneself in order not to be left behind. But dealing with these changes is not always easy.

The university strategy requires increasingly sophisticated use of new technologies across the board. Senior managers need to acquire the basic knowledge to be able to have a strategic vision of the changes in the new digital environment, while executives need to have a much more practical vision of technology, to be able to specialise and provide growth.

Universities willing to move out from their comfort zone, adapt quickly, effectively and able to understand how technology is a great ally in their digital transformation process, will be the ones that will succeed in the coming years.