- space/time
- defined chalenge
- structured process.
Category: organizations
Toward Disruption of Disruption
Disruption’s a magical buzzword these days, uncritically seized upon wherever you go. Far more than it ever was with new technologies, anyone who raises questions is an obvious counter-revolutionary, a luddite, a fan of the inefficient status quo. There’s precious little quality critical thinking around innovations like taxi apps, selling restaurant reservations, and market regulation – most of the discourse is either bandwagon fandom or knee-jerk anti-ism. Lepore, more a cultural than economic historian, seems to get the organizational and economic sociology of disruption and contributes a useful bit of provocation into an otherwise too often one-sided conversation.
From The New Yorker
ANNALS OF ENTERPRISE
THE DISRUPTION MACHINE
What the gospel of innovation gets wrong.
BY JILL LEPOREJUNE 23, 2014
In the last years of the nineteen-eighties, I worked not at startups but at what might be called finish-downs. Tech companies that were dying would hire temps—college students and new graduates—to do what little was left of the work of the employees they’d laid off. This was in Cambridge, near M.I.T. …. We’d work a month here, a week there. There wasn’t much to do. Mainly, we sat at our desks and wrote wishy-washy poems on keyboards manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, left one another sly messages on pink While You Were Out sticky notes, swapped paperback novels—Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, that kind of thing—and, during lunch hour, had assignations in empty, unlocked offices. At Polaroid, I once found a Bantam Books edition of “Steppenwolf” in a clogged sink in an employees’ bathroom, floating like a raft. “In his heart he was not a man, but a wolf of the steppes,” it said on the bloated cover. The rest was unreadable.
…
Porter was interested in how companies succeed. … Clayton M. Christensen… was interested in why companies fail. In his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” he argued that, very often, it isn’t because their executives made bad decisions but because they made good decisions, the same kind of good decisions that had made those companies successful for decades. (The “innovator’s dilemma” is that “doing the right thing is the wrong thing.”)
…
In “The Innovative University,” … Christensen and Eyring wrote, “will allow us to move beyond the forlorn language of crisis to hopeful and practical strategies for success.” … Christensen and Eyring’s recommendations for the disruption of the modern university include a “mix of face-to-face and online learning.” The publication … in 2011, contributed to a frenzy for Massive Open Online Courses…. Shortly afterward, the University of Virginia’s panicked board of trustees attempted to fire the president, charging her with jeopardizing the institution’s future by failing to disruptively innovate with sufficient speed….
See Also
- June, Anna North. 2014. “Arguing About the Truth of Disruption.” NYT OpTalk June 18, 2014
- Roose, Kevin. 2014. “The Problem With Profitless Start-ups,” New York Magazine, April 11, 2014
- Yglesias, Matthew. 2013 “Stop ‘Disrupting’ Everything: How a once-useful concept turned into a meaningless buzzword,” Slate, May 1, 2013
Education Resources from NYT
General
- Education Department
- National Center for Education Statistics
- The Nation’s Report Card, From the N.C.E.S.
- World Education Trends, O.E.C.D., 2005
News
- Education News, Daily digest of media reports.
- Education Week , Daily articles; some content by subscription only.
- Chronicle of Higher Education , Daily articles; in-depth coverage and data by subscription only.
- Almanac of Higher Education, From the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- Inside Higher Ed, News and commentary.
- Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education , Policy news, emphasizing Western states.
- Arts & Letters Daily
- College newspapers online
Policy Groups
- Center on Education Policy
- Education Trust
- Alliance for Excellent Education
- Fair Test, Opposes over-reliance on standardized testing.
- Center for Educational Freedom , Cato Institute
- Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Associations
- American Council on Education , Higher education.
- Association of American Universities
- American Association of Community Colleges
Education Unions
- National Education Association
- American Federation of Teachers
- United Federation of Teachers, Represents New York City teachers.
- Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions
Philanthropies
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Council for Advancement and Support of Education
- Ford Foundation
- Lumina Foundation for Education
- William and Flora Hewitt Foundation
Teaching
- Teach for America
- American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
- National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
- National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification
College Admissions
- AdmissionsAdvice.com, Tips, reviews, links and a blog from a college counselor.
- CollegeConfidential.com, Advice and reviews.
- College Board, Advice on finding a college, applications and financial aid.
- College Bound
- National Association for College Admissions Counseling, Student resources.
- Common college application , Used by about 300 schools.
College Rankings
- U.S. News & World Report
- Princeton Review, Based on student surveys.
- Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, “Best values in education.”
- Washington Monthly, Schools that promote social mobility.
- Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
- Hispanic Magazine
- John Templeton Foundation , Evaluating character development.
- Graduate school rankings
- Business Week , Business school rankings.
- Wall Street Journal, Business school rankings.
Financial Aid and Loans
- Federal Education Department, Portal for Information on student loans and aid.
- Online TutorialFrom Kiplinger, a financial advice magazine.
- The Government’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), Most students interested in financial aid for college will need to complete this.
- College Board’s Aid Calculator For comparing financial aid offers.
Study Abroad
Higher Education Studies
- Trends in college prices and aid, From the College Board.
- State by state “report card”, From the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
- College graduation rates, From the Education Trust
- The American Freshman, Annual survey by UCLA.
- The State of College Admission , Annual survey by NACA.
- Community College Research Center
- The Center for Studies in Higher Education
Documents
- “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” , The 1983 white paper that triggered the standards movement, written by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.
- “Answers in the Tool Box: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor’s Degree Completion” A 1999 U.S. Department of Education study that describes and assesses the high school curriculum, based on a study of student transcripts.
- Racial segregation in schools and inequities in the quality of public education, Analysis from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
- “Growing By Degrees: Online Education in the United States, 2005”
- “The American Freshman” Annual survey of entering freshmen at nearly 400 four-year colleges and universities.
- “A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year Colleges and Universities” (2004) The Education Trust’s analysis of graduation rates at four-year colleges and universities.
- “The Expectations Gap: A 50-State Review of High School Graduation Requirements” (2004)
- “The State of College Admission”
- “Federal Student Loan Debt: 1993 to 2004”
Issue brief from the American Council on Education. - “Cracks in the Education Pipeline: A Business Leader’s Guide to Higher Education Reform” (2005) By the Committee on Economic Development, a business group with longstanding focus on education issues.
- “Pathways to College Access and Success” (2005), Case studies of alternate paths through high school, by the U.S. Department of Education.
The National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual report