Capitalism and business models go together. It’s a natural conversation.
Do you want a better business? Get a better business model.
This blog post below inspired me.
Whose Job Is It Anyway?: “
Henry Chesbrough’s article in today’s WSJ about the importance of business models in innovation reinforces a point we often make here: the most important, effective, and disruptive innovations are often the result of new business models, not new products or technologies. (Think Netflix to Blockbuster or iTunes to the rest of the music industry.)
“(Via Innovation Ecosystem.)
In higher education, maybe what we need is not Web 2.0-ified classrooms, not pedagogy, or grants or think tanks. Maybe what we need is new business models.
I’m not talking about corporate sponsorships.
A different value exchange. Red Hat vs. Microsoft. eMule vs. Sony Music. Education runs ad-hoc like Alcoholics Anonymous, and degrees granted by peer review instead of outdated tenure.
But the idea of a “business model” is disagreeable to many academics. It’s too capitalist – to them it implies greed instead of creativity. Designing a new model is certainly no one’s “job” in academia.
So some who get it labor within the system, trying to distract entrenched with new. There is no position for them to talk to, so they talk to the top, or their peers, all of whom have other responsibilities maintaining the status quo.
It doesn’t seem to work from the inside out. Not one of the big-5 music companies has really made use of the new distribution models – instead, they’ve fought, and continue to fight, to hold on to the same business model they understand.
Here’s to the fellow “upstarts”, may some of us make it through.
