“What happens if Harvard Business School will get “Off-Line”? — Somebody else will do it!”
—Andreas Weber, Founder ValueAcademy

 

Critical Thoughts by Şükran Ceren Salalı, Value Communication Fellow

 

As I have already mentioned in my previous blog post, people debate a lot about whether disruptive innovation has benefits as much as it is told or not. Not only companies, but also different institutions voice their opinion about these new “disruptive” and “destructive” techniques of innovation. One of the questions raised by these voices is whether Harvard Business School enters the business of online education or not? If yes, how should they do that?

There are many different answers and approaches from university administrators and professors. Even the NYT reported about it. Some of them supported the idea to open online education platforms, while others hesitate to lose benefits and popularity. For instance, as you can follow it from the text, Prof. Porter supports the idea itself to some extent but highlights the importance of keeping the existing strategy of school whereas Prof. Christensen sees already existing online education system not as a “disruptive innovation” but as a “sustaining innovation”.  The reason for that, probably, once they enter the online education sector, they will have more students but then they should decrease costs. In other terms, as one of the best and most prosperous universities, they may lose their profits.

 

Our Take: You can’t do value education without disruptive Value Innovation

I think, in the age of digital transformation, education needs to get some disruptive innovation as well. Maybe, we can call it “digital education”. Digital Education allows many applicants around the world to benefit from online education platforms via several tools such as iPhone, iPad and other portable instruments. Considering all of these, I am pretty surprised that how as one of the top ranked and most successful universities, Harvard Business School, has a dilemma about entering online education.

In my opinion, education must be available for everyone and it should also be in suitable prices. If they value education, they should be open to disruptive innovations as well as many students and applicants.

 

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