Unpredictability

When I moved to Gertrude St, Fitzroy, almost 20 years ago, people asked, “Why on earth would you want to live there?”.

Today, it’s one of Melbourne’s hippest coffee, eating and fashion streets and my 19th century shopfront home and warehouse office get different comments: “How on earth did you get your hands on those?”

Many say that this gentrification was inevitable. But, while many other slices of the inner city were yuppified in the 80s and 90s, Gertrude St remained resolutely down-at-heel well into this millennium (think rooming houses, not baristas).

If you think about it, most disruption is just like this. It’s not if, it’s when. “Timing is everything” as the saying goes, and understanding the drivers of change, not just the change itself, is where we need skill and insight.

For instance, I’ve predicted for decades the rise of video conferencing (I don’t believe I was alone). But it took just one driver (a pandemic) to make it commonplace1. And, since my own university days in the 80s, I’ve imagined an approach to education that is user-centric, customisable and endlessly varied (my experience was none of these). Today, though, we do have the right combination of drivers in place that, I predict, will make universities obsolete (at least in their current form).

Why? And, why now?

Here are three data points:

1. Google, Apple, IBM, Penguin Random House and others have thrown out university degree requirements in their recruitment processes, instead emphasizing worker skills.
2. In the US, college enrolments are falling, with nearly 750,000 fewer students than previously (yes, high fees are part of this, as are student realisations that 40% of university degrees aren’t what employers want).
3. Credible providers of online education are booming. One of my clients, the Australian Institute of Company Directors reported a record year in 2020, as has Harvard Business School Online whose enrolments are up 650% from 2019, and Coursera with 500%+ increase in student numbers.

What are the drivers of this?

Here are just five:

1. market freedom (loose regulation coupled with almost zero platform costs);
2. technology agility (everyone can play, when it suits);
3. micro-purchasing (you can buy a very narrow slice);
4. niching (anything you want is taught by someone); and
5. the democratisation of ‘thought leadership’ (anyone who knows something others don’t can monetise this via platforms as basic as Youtube).

This e-learning market globally is estimated to exceed $350b this year and shows no sign of stopping soon, so disruption to bricks and mortar incumbents is rife.

Question: How do you identify (and adapt to) the drivers that will disrupt your sector?