In Beyond Quick Fixes (Rouse, 2024) I considered how human-centered interventions could mitigate the health, education, energy, and mis/dis information challenges addressed in this book. I explored how these ecosystems could benefit from seeing them as human-centered systems. This led to my postulating how all four challenges could be mitigated as a whole, reflecting an […]
How can we get people to understand societal changes that are desirable and achievable if they embrace and support such pursuits? More specifically, how can we energize support for transformation of health, education, and energy ecosystems to achieve desirable, high priority outcomes? Consider related achievements in similar arenas in the past. Abolitionism, or the abolitionist […]
What happens if a fundamental tenet of life turns out to be wrong? Does it depends on the nature of the premise or belief? How central is it to how you manage your life? Does this realization fundamentally change your subsequent behavior? Do you become a different person than you would have become with this […]
When and how do organizational change initiatives make a real and lasting difference? When there is shared recognition of existing and/or emerging value deficiencies, which requires a shared understanding of the nature of value and how the organization creates value. When there is shared agreement on the range of change alternatives that have potential to […]
I have encountered a range of situations – in industry, government, and academia – where the financial well being of the organization is severely threatened and leadership refuses to recognize the situation and accept agency for dealing with it. I recall one situation in academia where I asked the Provost how he would deal with […]
What do these three practices have in common? Selling exorbitantly-priced drugs that provide no relative health benefits, but one cannot buy particular patented drugs and devices from other suppliers Producing very expensive weapon systems that may no longer be needed, but one cannot buy these weapon systems and spare parts from other suppliers One cannot […]
I have been wondering about change initiatives that are hopeless in the sense that change is virtually impossible. What do I mean by “impossible”? Theoretical impossibility is quite rare. Planes that fly faster than the speed of light and the elimination of death and all taxes are good examples. Most would agree on the impossibility […]
Do the times make leaders or do leaders make the times? I have long thought that great leaders understand the times and determine how to take advantage of them. More specifically, I think many great leaders have had a naturalistic orientation to understanding their worlds in terms of what is achievable, in what time frames, […]
The time that I can devote to reading has soared over the past two years. I spend much less time getting to and from meetings – typically zero. Here are my four favorite books of the past two months. I highly recommend them. Top of the list is Andy Norman’s Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, […]
We seem to think of the future, and perhaps the past, in terms of decades. We likely recall our grandparents and, of course, our parents. We consider our own lives and those of our children in terms of employment, education and eventually retirement. Our overall time horizon for planning is likely 20-40 years. Our plans […]
I have been thinking about the extent to which ideas are fleeting but institutions are sustaining. Certainly ideas can be cumulative in the sense that electricity led to communications then computing and eventually networking via digital devices and social media. This took roughly 150 years, but that is just a blip in the 6,000 years […]
Most organizations have missions and visions for how best to pursue missions, regardless of whether these value statements are formalized or not. Organizational performance metrics indicate how well the organization is performing in terms of revenues, profits, lives saved or students educated. Successful organizations excel in terms of organizational performance. Most organizations try to improve […]
People who are advantaged by the status quo tend to be averse to changing it. Consequently, those who are favored in this way tend to herald its merits and distain the alternatives. Why wouldn’t we continue the policies and strategies that generously rewarded them in the past. As leader of an organization needing to entertain […]
What would you like to change? Your eating habits and weight? Your exercise habits and fitness? Your salary and financial situation? What about your opinions. How about your fundamental beliefs? It is much easier to avoid eating fried foods than to avoid flawed thinking. Entertaining evidence that shows your opinions and beliefs to be simply […]
Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, 2004) provide compelling evidence for how complex societies fail. I am not going to rigorously follow their analyses. However, I am going to leverage their insights into the sources of […]
Economic growth, many argue, stems from technological innovation. Does technological innovation depend on the flow of STEM talent from our educational system? That certainly was not the case in the 19th and 20th centuries. Inventors emerged from all corners of society, few equipped with degrees in science and technology. The transformation from inventions to innovation […]
For many years, my research related to design, operations, and maintenance of national security and space systems. Over the past two decades, I have added healthcare delivery, higher education, urban systems, as well as energy and transportation. These complex ecosystems interact in myriad ways. In particular, they interact in terms of claims on societal resources. […]
I began my career as an engineering assistant at Raytheon over 50 years ago. Since then, I have founded and managed five high-tech companies, and held faculty positions at six universities. These experiences led to working with 100+ companies, agencies, foundations, etc. What has changed over the course of this journey? Increased computing power at […]
The 2020-21 “multi-demic” of the coronavirus, economic disruption, and racial unrest has prompted a wealth of promising ideas for how to improve everyone’s lives in terms of health and wellness, economic security, and racial equity. As appealing as these ideas may be, they will face enormous implementation challenges and hurdles. We have been here before […]
According to Wikipedia, “Critical race theory is an academic movement of civil rights scholars and activists in the United States who seek to critically examine the law as it intersects with issues of race and to challenge mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. Critical race theory examines social, cultural and legal issues as they relate […]
I recently finished James Suzman’s fascinating book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots (Penguin Press, 2021). He chronicles humans’ work practices over many millennia. The meaning of work has changed dramatically over this period. Perspectives that we take for granted emerged much more recently than one might have […]
Many problems and potential fixes are being considered and debated to address the pandemic, associated economic slump, and economic and social inequities. Climate change is hovering in the wings. How do all these potential initiatives fit together? I think we can integrate all of these ideas by thinking about how they all support pursuit of […]
Most organizations want members of their workforce to be more collaborative, share information, and make better and faster decisions. These pursuits are often termed workforce culture transformation. For very large organizations, for example, elements of the federal government, this can be a daunting aspiration. Consider experiences with two examples of transforming work. Over the past […]
I recently read Robertson and Breen’s Brick by Brick: How Lego Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry (Crown Business, 2013). As my children, grandchildren, and I have been long-time Lego fans, this book was fascinating. It led me to think about innovation more broadly. But first, let’s consider the Lego […]
The old normal involved lots of bus, metro, and uber rides to meetings with sponsors, colleagues, and friends in pursuit of new opportunities, progress on existing opportunities, and just plain socializing. Transit time was at least an hour per day and sometimes two, sitting in a bus, train, or car catching up on your email […]
What needs to change to transform our society in the ways needed to achieve new levels of equality, performance, and value creation? I have nine suggestions in two broad areas. In general, we need to move from status quo practices to best practices as shown in the table below. Function Best Practices Status Quo […]
There are several forces currently driving change in our society: Pandemic impacts that have completely upset the status quo Economic impacts of the pandemic that have left many in dire straights Disproportionate effects of economic, educational and social inequities These forces have led to an overwhelmed healthcare system, enormous unemployment, and intense frustration on the […]
Facebook, Twitter, and other emergent platforms have resulted in the Balkanization of the world of information. There are large subpopulations that believe the moon landing was faked, climate change and the pandemic are hoaxes, and the presidential election was fraudulently stolen from Donald Trump. They only pay attention to information sources that support these views. […]
How can we deal with all the negative things swirling around us? A natural tendency is to hunker down and avoid the bad vibrations. Just wait out the negative things until positive things are possible. Of course, if everyone does this, anything positive could be a long time coming. Michael Curry has a proposal. Curry […]
Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press, 1988) presaged Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking Press, 2004). Both books provide vivid explanations of how societies fail and why. Societies create mechanisms to deal with new challenges. Walls are built to thwart Mongol hoards. Regulations are created to […]
How can innovation be cultivated in the public sector? Consider defense, education, and healthcare. These three primarily public sector systems are ripe for disruption and innovation. Enormous improvements of services and decreased costs are undoubtedly achievable. The key question is how to disrupt the status quo. Let’s first consider how a direct approach might work, […]
Recent challenges suggest that the complexity of society in the US has become increasingly difficult to understand and manage. We seem to have great trouble agreeing on anything. Consequently, we do not act to quickly understand what is happening and competently develop and execute compelling courses of action. Let’s explore the sources of the impasse. […]
We expect that the pandemic will lead to a new normal that will be significantly different than the old normal. Perhaps there will be opportunities for innovations in the marketplace. What changes deserve our bets? We can assume that people will always want pasta, potatoes or rice, as well as beans, broccoli or mushrooms. But […]
Zoom and other online platforms are working out pretty well. Teaching class this way is better than many people expected. Many types of doctor’s appointments are much easier logistically and are more satisfying than driving, waiting, etc. Social get-togethers using these platforms are not as good, but they are much better than social isolation. Once […]
Over the past two days I was immersed in two Zoom meetings, one for 6 1/2 hours and another for 7 hours. The first was a National Academy of Engineering convocation, which I helped organize. I was one of the two speakers who wrapped up each half day. The second was a Division of Behavioral […]
After 163 posts of over 90,000 words — a 360-page book if published traditionally – we have reached the 10th anniversary of this blog. So, what has happened? Here are a few highlights, none of which this blog influenced. On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency with 365 electoral votes to 173 received […]
The man reached into his suit coat pocket, pulled out a wallet, and flipped it open to show his badge. “Agent Sam Baker, FBI.” George froze. He did not know what to do. After a few seconds of just staring at Baker, he said, “How do you know me?” “We have been watching Freethinker Forum […]
In my early 50s, I changed my research focus from engineered systems — such as airplanes, ships, and power plants — to healthcare delivery. The central question was how to make the fragmented system in the US more effective and efficient. Now in my early 70s, I have for the past couple of years been […]
The reception and dinner for Board of Trustees was held at the River’s Edge an upscale venue on the Hudson River on the eastern side of the Beresford property. “Welcome to everyone – trustees and guests,” Marie opens, after having clinked a spoon of a water glass to gain attention. “Welcome to Beresford Village. Most […]
Brad, Mary, and George meet in Marie’s conference room. Marie will join them later. Pete O’Connor has been recruited to help. Pete is Director of Educational Technology at Beresford. “Pete, we have been doing some benchmarking of course offerings around the country,” George opens. “What have you found?” Pete asks. “There is sufficient high quality […]
Phil Chen, the Beresford Provost, walked into Marie’s office. They greeted each other and shook hands, and then sat across from each other at Marie’s conference table. “Phil, I want to outline a new hiring strategy and get your opinion.” “Sounds great.” “Let me provide a bit of background first.” “Ok.” Marie discussed her analysis […]
Marie and George were drawn to exploring the real nature of value in higher education. “Are we investing in the things that create the most value for students and society?” Marie questioned. “It is not just a question of where we deploy each year’s discretionary resources. It is also an issue of where we deploy […]
“Ok, what is the upside of the subsidy? I think I know, but I want your assessment, George,” Marie opens. “Faculty members publish journal articles, that get cited, and over time increase their h-index,” George responds. “An h-index of N means that you have N or more articles cited at least N times. Right?” “Yes. […]
George has been exploring how money is spent and the outcomes produced. His latest quest has been trying to understand the benefits of subsidizing faculty members so they can pursue research. When Marie and George operated at the department level, it never occurred to him to question this. However, Beresford is trying to make it […]
I couldn’t tell whether the inquiry related to an opportunity for entertainment, adventure, or travel. To my complete surprise, the inquiry led to a possible offer of employment. The employer wanted me to join a team that would be exploring complexity. I asked what that meant. They said, “It is difficult to explain, but we […]
I have always been fiscally conservative and socially liberal which, when I lived in New England, meant that I was a moderate Republican aligned with the likes of Edward Brooke, John Chafee, Eliot Richardson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Margaret Chase Smith. I was a fan of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton 1, and Obama — […]
There is much concern lately that AI will displace human workers and perhaps eventually discard humans entirely. I suppose such scenarios are imaginable. However, I have been thinking about the potential of AI to do work that I currently do poorly. I almost always under invest in this work, often resulting in poor performance, wasted […]
A university chief executive has come to realize that competitive forces are closing in. Fortunately, the president has an AI based cognitive assistant to help formulate plans for addressing this new reality. This assistant is named George. “How can these projections be correct, George? We keep on raising enrollment and tuition to generate surplus revenue […]
I have been studying various treatises on our platform economy – how Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Apple, as well as Facebook and perhaps Microsoft, have become so central in our economy. These companies provide platforms on which many other services are delivered. Of course, the Internet enables almost all of this. It is a platform […]
This has been quite a week for dealing with technology. It started with submitting a revised journal article using a web-based publishing platform. It was unhappy because the zip code for one of my coauthors was missing. It wanted me to add this information but I did not know the user name and password for […]
The wonders of the Internet and social media seem to have radically changed the nature of relationships. This is perhaps most apparent in personal relationships where email, texting, Facebook, Twitter, and other offerings provide constant updates on what a vast network of family and friends are doing and thinking at the moment. Many people spend […]
Many pundits argue that driverless cars will soon be here. You can argue with the timelines they articulate, but it is difficult to disagree with the distinct possibility of the technology eventually maturing and becoming an increasing portion of the vehicles on the road. This technology will be truly disruptive. There will be the benefits […]
The steadily escalating costs of a college education coupled with spiraling mountains of student debts cannot be sustained. Universities are unwilling and unable to control costs, in large part due to the bloating of administrative and support functions (Rouse, 2016). A great example is the University of California System where, excluding the number of faculty […]
Various pundits are projecting that by 2020 – just four years – the driving of cars and trucks will be completely automated. Vehicle services, whether for consumers or businesses, will be readily available for very reasonable prices. I will not need to own a personal vehicle and my business can dispense with its fleet of […]
In “The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789,” Joseph J. Ellis chronicles the planning, drafting, and ratification of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in 1789. The title refers to George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. These four men, with support from Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson, led […]
Confidential sources have indicated that the NFL is considering some sweeping rule changes, all with a goal of increasing the entertainment value of the former sport. Unnamed executives indicated that, “Our goal is for fans to have fun, to go home with memories of exciting games when their team miraculously won despite the odds against […]
A recent issue of The Economist provided an in-depth review of how high technology financial startups are poaching high-margin financial services from large banks. The large banks are not standing still; they are often acquiring these startups once they prove viable. This may keep them in the game, but high margins are being substantially eroded […]
I am on the homestretch of being in New York City for three years, actually in the bleachers of Hoboken watching the game played by this remarkable city. For over 400 years, it has been an innovation ecosystem embracing change, creativity, and diversity. The only colony without a religious or political agenda, New York City […]
New York — Major US airlines announced today a new pricing model for air travel. Zero airfares. Free. The airlines have decided to unbundle all aspects of air travel. Customers will only pay for the services they desire. If they avoid all services, they will fly for free. The airline CEOs as a group issued […]
Invention or ideas lead to innovation and change, often championed by someone other than the originator – think of Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. The change agent builds an empire around the innovation, typically aspiring to monopolize the commercial value of the innovation. The empire becomes exploitive of customers, employees, and the environment. Eventually, the […]
Over the past two years, I have become a frequent train traveler between New York and mostly Washington, but also Albany and Boston. The Acela is more expensive than flying but much more convenient and usually on time. The other Amtrak trains provide much poorer service. Delays are frequent; an hour or more is not […]
From many years in Atlanta, I have known many UPS executives, including CEO Mike Eskew who led the transformation of UPS from a package delivery company to a global supply chain services company. I use a case study of this transformation in my classes and workshops on enterprise transformation. It is one of my favorite […]
Various pundits in sundry domains attempt to predict what will happen. In domains such as climate change, urban systems, and national politics, which are laced with human and social phenomena, such predictions are folly. There are far too many possible ways in which individuals and social groups can behave in response to evolving events, whether […]
Recently, I went to Kara Schlichting’s lecture, “From Dumps to Glory: City Planning, Coastal Reclamation, and the Rebirth of Flushing Meadow for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.” The next morning, I read Russ Buettner’s article in the New York Times, “They Kept a Lower East Side Lot Vacant for Decades.” That afternoon, I went […]
In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber published “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” in the journal Policy Science (volume 4, pp. 155-169). In this article, they characterized “wicked problems” as follows: There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem Wicked problems have no stopping rule – there is always a […]
Fundamental change is pervasive across every level of life. In this post, I compare four levels and time scales of change including evolution (millions of years), history (thousands of years), industry (centuries), and technology (decades). This comparison leads to a few overall observations about transformation and a few insights into how people think about fundamental […]
Enterprise transformation involves redesigning or creating new work processes that enable remediating anticipated or experienced value deficiencies. This implies that some aspects of the enterprise have to be discarded. Why not discard everything? That is certainly as option, but it is called liquidation rather than transformation. A central question is what do you keep and […]
The lack of committed visionary leadership will doom any transformation aspirations. However, will the presence of such leadership assure success? The simple answer is, “No!” Great aspirations and ideas need compelling plans to succeed. Further, these plans have to be successfully executed to realize these aspirations. Quite often, plan fall prey to inabilities to execute. […]
Change tends to be very difficult, but it does happen. Technology is one of the key drivers of change. Technologies enable new possibilities, such as typing this post on my iPad early Sunday morning, sipping coffee and listening to the rain. The iPad means that I can be productive any time, any place. This capability […]
Over the past two semesters, I have been helping Georgia Tech undergraduate teams to contribute to transforming healthcare delivery. Their senior “capstone” projects have focused on patient in-flow (Emergency Department), in-patient operations (Operating Rooms) and patient out-flow (Discharge and Bed Turnover). Three eight-person teams addressed each of these areas of hospital operations. The problems these […]
It is fairly common for the perceived benefits of current market offerings to fade and new value propositions to displace older offerings. As noted in earlier posts, Schumpeter called this process “creative destruction.” Steel ships replaced iron ships, which replaced wooden ships. Microprocessors subsumed transistors, which replaced vacuum tubes. Change happens and creative destruction causes […]
I have recently been involved with an enterprise that has somehow managed to embrace just about the worst transformation practices possible. It all started with the vocabulary the leaders chose to employ. They managed to paint a transformation picture that they apparently had no intention of pursuing. While they portrayed fundamental change, their actions totally […]
Change happens when it is forced. The force can be an opportunity or a threat, perhaps embodied in a crisis. In many domains, the forces for change are manifested as market forces. Competitors, large or small, recognized or unrecognized, are the sources of market forces. Thus, change happens when there is competition to meet market […]
A few months ago, a colleague asked me, “What if our big idea does not get approved by the powers at be?” I said, “We will start an insurgency and just do it anyway.” We are still waiting for approval, and may get it, but we are quickly progressing despite the lack of formal blessing. […]
There are many impediments to addressing and solving executives’ toughest problem – see my last post. Resource limitations – time, money, and people – can obviously be impediments. Less obvious, and often much more troublesome, are the stewards of the status quo. These stewards include people and organizations who are determined to keep everything as […]
Over the past two decades, I have often asked executives about their toughest problem. Not surprisingly, they use many different words to answer this question. However, there is quite a consensus around, “Running the enterprise I have while trying to create the enterprise I want.” Keeping the existing enterprise running tends to be a very […]
We continue to anguish over escalating healthcare costs. To gain control of these costs, we need to understand one essential equation. The total cost of healthcare is Total Cost = Costs Per Use x Number of Uses Careful design of delivery processes to eliminate unwarranted care process variations can decrease the costs per use. Variations […]
I recently resigned from an administrative leadership position at my university, having served for ten years in this position and an earlier one. The precipitating event involved decisions by senior administrative leadership that I felt limited my abilities to continue in my role. My guess is that it was not intended to have that effect, […]
I gave a keynote lecture on “Enterprise Transformation” at the Logistics International Congress last Wednesday in Bogota, Colombia. I also listened to several other talks from government officials in various ministries, as well as a few academics. I spent quite a bit of time talking with a wide range of people. Overall, I learned much […]
Most people seem to agree that we need to be more conservative when it comes to energy. We need to conserve our stocks of fossil fuels while also investing in renewable energy sources. Our electrical grid is rife with inefficiencies, ranging from transmission losses to power-hungry devices in our homes. The notion of a Smart […]
National defense, and acquisition of weapon systems in particular, has long been a target of transformation. The Packard Commission in 1985 provided a very reasonable set of recommendations for reforming defense acquisition processes. These recommendations resulted in relatively minor changes. Blue ribbon committees both before and after the Packard Commission had comparably minor impacts. President […]
On November 15th of 2010, I began a small experiment. The lease on my car ended that day, and I just turned the car in and took the bus home. I decided to see what life would be like without a car. My office is close to a subway stop and there is a bus […]
Healthcare presents a major challenge for the U.S. We pay twice as much per capita as any other country; yet achieve much poorer results in terms of health and longevity. The current system can be characterized as a federation of millions of entrepreneurs with no one in charge. Even assuming that everyone is well intended, […]
It is difficult to transform a large enterprise. Leaders of many private sector enterprises have told me that their toughest job is managing the enterprise they have while trying to create the enterprise they want. Not surprisingly, the failure rate is very high, as illustrated by 200% turnover in the Fortune 500 in the past […]
I am in Beijing and Shanghai for a few days. The reason for my being in China is to chair the International Review Board at Tsinghua University where we are reviewing the Department of Industrial Engineering. The basic statistics are chilling. In the U.S., 4% of undergraduates matriculate in engineering. Of those that graduate, 12% […]
Last week, I was a visiting faculty member as a Spine Symposium. I gave three talks related to a systems approach to healthcare delivery. The context of spine surgery was purely serendipitous, as the folks inviting me did not know in advance that I have spent several years doing my best to avoid spine surgery. […]
I have been in Australia and New Zealand for the past two weeks – I am in Sydney right now. The first week was a workshop at Gold Coast in Australia. This workshop was to have been held in Brisbane, but floods reached the second floor of the hotel where the workshop was to be […]
Our graduate seminar on “Transforming Academia” started this week. We focused on the roots of the modern university in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and The Enlightenment. We debated the interpretation of developments in terms of transformational versus evolutionary changes. Also of central interest were the causes of change. The plague, printing press and paper all […]
Here are all the suggestions received thus far: Altbach, P.G., Berdahl, R.O., & Gumport, P.J. (Eds.).(2005). American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political and Economic Challenges. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Barke, R. (2000). Sustainable Technology/Development and Challenges to Engineering Education. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education, St. Louis, MO. […]
The first universities in Europe — University of Bologna (1088), University of Oxford (1096), University of Paris (1150), University of Modena (1175) — began as private corporations of teachers and their pupils. Soon they realized they needed protection against local city authorities. They petitioned secular power for privileges and this became the model for academia. […]
I have worked with well over 100 enterprises and several thousand executives and senior managers, often focused on initiatives that have the potential to fundamentally change their enterprises. Somewhat simplistically, these initiatives depended on three ingredients – technology, people, and organizations. Frequently these executives and managers commented that technology was the easy part. People and […]
How does change differ within various aspects of society? Are differing changes somehow related? C.P. Snow has argued that there is a chasm between the arts and humanities, and science and technology (Snow, 1965). However, all of these endeavors are inevitably influenced by the times in which they are pursued. Consider the late 18th and […]
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion of a “tipping point,” the point at which something is displaced from a state of equilibrium and evolves, either quickly or slowly, to a new and different state of equilibrium. For example, my telephone bill used to be something like $20 per month; now it is several hundred. The capabilities […]
I have been reading a lot of history lately, mostly U.S. history from 1620 to 1914, trying to understand the nature of changes that occurred in that period. The dominant businesses are interesting – cod fish in the Grand Banks, whales in Nantucket and New Bedford, ships for fishing and commerce (including slaves), textiles in […]
We seem to be in times of great uncertainty and potentially enormous changes. I have been wondering how different this is from the past. To answer this question, I reviewed our country’s first 40 decades – from 1620 until now in the first year of the 40th decade. How many decades would you guess there […]
It is typical to think about change in terms of intentions and consequences. We intend to exercise more or eat better to achieve the consequences of weight loss and improved fitness. The President intends to move the country towards greater use of renewable energy sources to achieve the consequences of greater energy independence and decreased […]
Starting with the overarching objective of a healthy, educated, and productive population that is competitive in the global marketplace, what should be done? Let’s work through this piece by piece. Start with healthy. We are facing an epidemic of chronic disease, driven in part by an epidemic of obesity. The eventual financial costs of diabetes […]
The debate in Washington seems stuck in partisan positioning and sound bites. We have lost track of the fundamental objectives that need to be pursued. I think the overarching objective should be quite simple – we want a healthy, educated, and productive population that is competitive in the global marketplace. We do not really want […]
The transformation framework from the last post can be applied to thinking through the four scenarios for academia from the post before the last one. Consider the Network U. scenario. This scenario basically involves changing offerings across the instruction function and/or organization via process and technology changes. Put simply, teaching would be quite different. All […]
What will the academic world be like in 25 years – 2035? Thinking 25 years into the future is quite difficult, as is evidenced by thinking back to 1985 and imagining our current iPhones, Kindles, and pervasive social technology such as Facebook. Nevertheless, it is interesting – and potentially useful – to consider future scenarios. […]
