Moving the Ivory Tower to the Web (Part 2)

Moving the Ivory Tower to the Web (Part 2)
by Harold Jarche | Wed, 10/15/2008 - 08:17

With the rise of open learning, the time to think about the move to an online model is now. We have seen organizations in other sectors that are decisively moving to the web doing well. A good example is iTunes which usurped many existing music retailers. Organizations that only partially moved to the open Web have done less well, as witnessed by Barnes & Noble which is really a bookstore with a web presence. Compare that to Amazon which is a pure web-based book seller. Another example is the New York Times which has more web subscribers than paper subscribers but all of its costs are tied to the paper. The newspaper spends a fair part of its revenue on its older business, so it lacks the flexibility of a pure web company.

This is the same problem facing established academic institutions. Current revenues rest with the old way of doing business - students in classes. Going to the new Web model threatens those who make their living with the old model. Therefore leaders in the old hesitate because they are tied to their existing revenue streams. They cannot put the new inside the old. The answer is to locate the new outside of the old infrastructure and let the new unit go after customers who are not served by the current model. This way institutions can hold onto the value of their existing business for as long as possible while building up new capabilities with a different business model.