eb81103 Disruptive Innovation

Looks like the US and World is being caught up in the passion for “Change.” Lets catch the wave for “eLearning.”

Simple brands are more powerful than you might think!

Enjoy some thoughts on disruptive innovation.

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 How would you like to see public schools as we know them go away? Other magnificent innovations have all but disappeared from our life. Who in the early 1900’s would have predicted the passing of ocean liners, steam locomotives, ice men or button hooks? But they are gone, destroyed by the airplanes, diesel engines, refrigerators and Velcro.

At the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) 1200 person, 40 vendor expo national meeting in Glendale last week, a keynote theme was Disruptive Innovation. This recent enhance to innovation theory that I learned in the 1970’s has a darker side, or lighter depending on your passion.

It can disruptive in the case where the target industry eventually absorbs the innovation and is renewed, really for another century of effective productivity. Shoe manufacturers and railroads are good examples.  

But it can also be destructive, destroying most of the current providers. Ice houses and steam ship passenger lines are all but vanished.

Note: Ads and articles from my National Geographic collection back to 1914 have provided a frame work for this disruption cycle with data and insight since I was eight.

The NACOL keynote speaker, Michael Horn is executive director of Innosight Institute www.innosightinstitute.com which is the hangout of Clayton Christensen – Harvard guru on industry innovation. His latest book addresses our K-12 education industry, “Disrupting Classroom – How Disrupting Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.”

Dr. Christensen analyses the data on the number of students enrolled in online classes from 2001 (45,000) to 2007 (1Million). The trusty semi log plot delivers a straight line that forecasts that half of high school courses will be on the internet by 2019. He is quoted in “Digital Directions” Ed Week’s new trade magazine that the best managers in the world could not effectively transform current legacy schools.

If he is correct, then we-who-believe that our K-12 system can be transformed and not replace by eLearningi are facing a huge disappointment. But my experience in the business and K-12 industries tells me thesis is too narrow.

Innovation has is a transforming drive that ranges from incremental intra-enterprise to world wide systems. Micro innovation focuses on the champion. Industry wide disruption results in replace with vast changes in infrastructure, knowledge, leadership and organizations.

The powerful insight that Professor Christensen’s researchi brings has been this industry innovation concept. There are elements that we can use to accelerate eLearning adoption in our school system. The basic concept is that industries like the 1970’s-1980’s high profit minicomputer industry, with smart management and massive research operations, would rationally decide that the personal computer was not worth their interest. It was of lower technology, very cheap, low profit and none of their customers wanted then in the late 1970’s. But in the fall of 1989 the mini computer market crashed and all the major mini computer companies and divisions disappeared – DEC, Wang, Burroughs, Sperry-Rand, Honeywell, HP. The micro-computer had slowly increased in capability and market size in many other fringe markets until it surged into the minicomputer market and drove out the high cost minicomputers.

eLearning is following the same path in Arizona. Online 1:1 (students per computer) learning is being adopted for credit recovery, home schooling, virtual schools, remote locations, alternative education and individualized interactive learning. Itsi entry points are the fringe areas of K-12 learning that legacy schools find difficult or impossible to serve. Brick and mortar 1:1 classrooms and schools are also emerging in Arizona at a semi log pace. Both require champions during the early stage of innovation. At the state level we provide infrastructure, knowledge, resources and policies – regulations to keep a disruptive innovation from becoming a destructive innovation.

Michael Horn had the final words of advice at the end of his Harvard Business Review article:

1.      Technology enabled the disruptive innovation.

2.      Business model was also innovative with new value proposition, resources, processes, etc.

3.      There was a new value chain that enabled the innovation – for education a major part of the new value chain could be the Learning Management System.

 Not complete, but a good start. Its up to us to finish.