Bringing Disruptive Innovation to Independent Education
A new paper from the Center for American Progress and the Innosight Institute (see the executive summary here) describes higher education in the United States as being in dire need of "disruptive innovation," using language that could just as well apply to the independent school sector. The authors, Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, Louis Caldera, and Louis Soares, define a disruptive innovation as one that transforms complicated, expensive, and inaccessible products or services into ones that are simple, affordable, and convenient, serving many no matter their wealth. Higher education has, for decades, focused on expanding access without improving affordability; e.g., Pell grants, student loans, support from endowments, etc. A truly disruptive innovation, to these authors, would be one that improves affordability (i.e. reduces cost) and thereby increases access to services.
The most potent source of disruptive innovation on the education scene appears to be on-line learning, something that is ubiquitous in higher ed and penetrating the independent secondary school market at an accelerating rate. Like Argyris's "double-loop" change, technology in education seems to work by first competing against nonconsumption--by serving those who would otherwise not be served by independent schools (e.g., home schoolers, international students, students in under-resourced public districts). As time goes on, however, innovations tend to be upwardly scalable by improving year over year without replicating the old cost structure.
The first of three big points in the paper is that, at first, disruptive innovations are of somewhat lesser quality than what they replace, mainly because they emerge as replacements for more labor-intensive alternatives. But with time, the same innovation can become truly disruptive by improving its quality to a point where it rivals or exceeds the old version. This is happening now as formerly pariah for-profit colleges become mass educators of a larger and larger number of students. The trick is to ride through the rough spots and stay the course long enough to see the gains.
The second point is that because they are viewed as threats from the vantage point of traditional players in the field, "plugging a disruptive innovation into an existing business model never results in transformation of the model; instead the existing model co-opts the innovation to sustain how it operates." This means that on-line learning, to be fully disruptive, must be plugged into new business models and autonomous business entities, not merely grafted onto traditional schools.
The authors go further to say that the value proposition on offer from a school must align with the business model and the disruptive innovation. Using a higher education example, on-line learning may better suit a school focusing on professional and career preparation than it does one aiming at creating new knowledge via research. The real cost advantages come when there is alignment; e.g., using on-line learning to focus on teaching and learning, not research, through an autonomous business entity that only contains the on-line product. So, the third point is that schools should develop online products to specifically deliver on their value propositions in ways that other approaches cannot.
Still sitting on the innovation sidelines? Maybe the real take-away if you are is in the following quote:
"...the business model of many traditional colleges and universities is broken. Their collapse is so fundamental that it cannot be stanched by improving the financial performance of endowment investments, tapping wealthy alumni donors more effectively, or collecting more tax dollars from the public. There needs to be a new model. The only question is whether traditional universities will undertake this replacement themselves, or whether community colleges, for-profit universities, and other entrant organizations aggressively using on-line learning will do it instead—and ultimately grow to replace many of today’s traditional institutions."
The same can be said for private, independent elementary and secondary schools in the U.S.