No Real Action leads to No Value

As I was preparing for my fireside chat with Dr. LeBlanc last week at Alliance'25, this quote from Simon Sinek came to mind.

Words may inspire, but only action creates change. - Simon Sinek        

This made me reflect once again on why credentials continue to struggle. You can hear inspiring words at webinars, quarterly meetings, and countless summits, but without action, change cannot happen.

If you don’t believe credentials are struggling to take flight, you’re not ready to fly — you’re still walking to your destination. I bring this topic up again because I believe AI will play a major role in transforming credentials into valuable assets in the market. If we continue to view credentials as traditional assets—like diplomas, courses, or majors—we are building for a 20th-century organization, not the future.

I’ll keep harping on this — because it matters.

The traditional credentialing strategy in higher education is broken and progress is at higher ed speed. The lack of real adoptions beyond small, isolated pockets should be the "canary in the coal mine" as to why credential fails to scale after all these years and number dedicated summits year after year.

There's plenty of words being shared, but very little meaningful action to implement the necessary changes beyond these limited efforts.

What is lack of action costing your campus?

Sure, many of you can keep spending $3,000 (Airfare, hotel, conference fees, ubers) to attend badge and digital credential summits, listening to the same people inspire you year after year — but without action, nothing changes, and your $3,000 goes down the drain.

How much have you spent over the past 10 years attending these conferences? More importantly, how much value have you actually brought back to the learners at your institution? What opportunity have you lost for not having a thriving credentials community?

Consider this: even the people leading these badge summits haven’t achieved full adoption on their own campuses or within their communities. Think about that. It’s because it’s all words — without action.

Yet, we’re still listening to the same student records and academics credentialing folks who have been stuck in their limited view for a decade, still talking about the “art of the possible.”

And what’s the result? No real adoption from the people who actually matter—industry.

You can play the role of a leader by giving presentations, but true leaders inspire action and get people to follow.

For me, I believe the reasons its broken is its built on outdated, linear models that prioritize institutional approval over real-world relevance.? Degrees, certificates, and even digital badges often fail to reflect true competency and career readiness because they rely on static validation methods rather than dynamic, industry-driven insights.

Let’s face it—credentials do not hold value. Let me say that again: your credentials hold no value because they are not recognized.

No one has equated credentials to real, valued outcomes. There is no unified process to define them, no standardized way to issue them, and while learners may have digital credentials, they hold no real meaning for industry.

Just because fields are aligned to common attributes doesn’t mean they define the currency of value—they may bring consistency, but they don’t establish real recognition.

I’m being very frank—no one has articulated their value beyond the traditional metrics used to approve academic coursework. That approach will not work in tomorrow’s ecosystem.

Adoption is the sign there is value.

Value doesn’t come from a bureaucratic, closed ecosystem, you know the "In Badge Group of higher education." It’s time to align credentials with folks that require credentials, industry. This creates real value for learners and empower them to thrive beyond the four walls of your campus.

For those wondering about my definition of adoption: Adoption occurs when a solution extends beyond its initial use case and is embraced by a broader audience.

In the context of higher education, it means institutions and industries recognizing and accepting credentials as a token of value for their respective purposes—just like degrees are today.

By the way, I believe credentials will eventually replace degrees.

Most adoption happens within isolated pockets of a campus unit. Let’s say 100 people? Or even 1,000? Even issuing a million badges—those aren’t the metrics that matter. The real measure of success is industry adoption and organizations recognizing these credentials as valuable.

No matter how many standards you establish or how many credentials you issue, if they don’t function as a valued currency within the broader ecosystem, they are ultimately ineffective.

While words of inspiration can showcase the "art of the possible", many promising ideas fail because they lack the ability to articulate and prove their value at scale. Why should someone adopt credentials? What are we losing by not leveraging them as part of a thriving ecosystem?

If you can’t articulate that, you can’t design for it. If you’re designing with a short-sighted mindset rooted in the 1900s, you’ll end up building yesterday’s model instead of tomorrow’s solution.

Credentials need a leader not committees

Committee conversations don’t lead—they seek comfort and consensus with the status quo.

Everyone seems content with their contribution, yet no true leader has emerged to drive real momentum and build a thriving ecosystem. Our credentialing community is committee-based — meeting quarterly, attending summits, sounding smart, inspiring—but lacking the impact that only comes from action.

Yes, I said it. I see it all the time. We have to move. We have to lead.

If you want to follow the committee approach, credentials will be nothing more than a new transcript by 2030.

Action will foster adoption and create value.

When working with my clients, I’m not following the badge summit roadmap. I’m focused on building value through industry adoption. I have to build confidence in them. I have to create value they recognize and need.

We will achieve this by building a framework that supports every stage of a credential. So, what are those stages—and how will we wrap AI around them?

Below are the stages we will layer AI around.?

Stages of Credentials

1. Creation – Defining what the credential represents, including skills, competencies, and achievements.
2. Publishing – Making the credential available through a structured framework for visibility and access.
3. Issuing – Assigning the credential to individuals based on verified criteria.
4. Validation – Ensuring the credential holds credibility, often through institutional or industry-recognized standards.
5. Reputation – Measuring the impact and trust of the credential over time, shaped by employer adoption and real-world outcomes.

These stages aren’t new, but understanding how AI will play a role — and how it will foster trust with industry — is a game changer.

The current approach to credential design is rooted in a traditional validation model. But with AI, everything changes. One-off data variables on a website or excel that attempt to capture standardization are limiting and not holistic. If designed properly, AI won’t be constrained by rigid tables of approved criteria. Humans alone can’t determine whether a skill is relevant enough to make someone more capable for a job, role, task, program, or career trajectory.

Until you understand the omnidirectional nature of these stages, you’ll continue designing credentials in a linear way, leading to silos and a lack of collaboration.

These stages are integrated, and none is more important than the other.

If you’re relying on an Excel spreadsheet to validate skills for a credential, you’re already limiting yourself to what humans can manually track. The real power of badges and credentials will come from industry and consumer feedback loops interacting at 400 terabytes a second. Wouldn’t you rather have data on real-world outcomes from people who have earned these credentials — or are you going to trust record keepers and academics who have never applied these skills in practice?

The Future of Credentialing with IntelliCampus

Want to help design a credentialing ecosystem that leverages the best of blockchain technology and AI? Let me know.

Our clients will be the first beta testers of these concepts. In the coming months, students from our client institutions will have credentials within an ecosystem that creates a true currency of value—starting with hospital systems across their state. Yes, across their state!

This means every nursing student will experience firsthand how their credentials can open doors to job opportunities.

As we build Intellicampus, one of our core focus areas is modernizing the credentialing process using AI.

With AI, we will shift from static validation to dynamic intelligence. AI will analyze real-world outcomes, industry needs, and evolving skills—ensuring credentials are context-aware, adaptable, and truly valuable. Instead of relying on spreadsheets and outdated approval tables, we’ll embed workflows and AI into every stage, enabling a living, learning ecosystem that continuously refines and validates credentials based on actual success in the field.

We will go deep into each of these stages and infuse AI into processes that humans simply can’t manage alone — but that will ultimately benefit both the learner and the community it serves.

I won't articulate how AI will play a role in this article, my clients will see it in action.

If you want in, join us as we design this for campuses that go beyond summit conversation. If you want change, action is needed.

Are you in? I am!

If this article resonate with you, or if your campus wants to create value of your credentials offering, reach out to me.