Recently I chanced upon this term ‘disruptive innovation’ while searching for some resources for my management class. I had heard it earlier, but did not go deeper then. Anyways, this time around I decided to spend a few minutes to understand this concept. Disruptive innovation is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market (Wikipedia, 2014). It is different from other forms of innovations, sustainable or revolutionary, in a way that it creates a new market and eventually disrupts the existing markets as well. Tata Nano can be considered as a disruptive innovation in India as it created a unique new market of low cost cars and slowly disrupted the business models of the existing car market.
I think higher education around the world also is going through some disruptive shake outs, the momentum gained by MOOCs being a perfect example. MOOCs have been started for a new market of online learners, but soon made massive inroads to all levels of education. Traditional universities are compelled to take note and look for ways to connect with it.
As I walk into my classroom and see the passive and often ‘blank’ faces of too many students in front of me, I feel that it’s time some form of disruptive innovation emerges in our classrooms as well. I firmly believe that technology offers a tremendous opportunity to innovate and engage this digital generation. Leveraging on the revolution of tablets and smart phones, the walls of the class rooms have to be broken beyond its constraints of time and space. The onus is on us to identify and experiment with lessons, projects, assessment and different aspects related to teaching learning process harnessing the possibilities technology offers.
MOOCs have shown an example how innovation is possible in otherwise an ultra-stable environment of education and universities. As a community of Academic
Entrepreneurs, we have to innovate, may be do a disruptive one, sooner the better!
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