Great Expectations of University

Charles Dickens is forever associated with Misery, Bankruptcy, Debt, Hypocrisy, Poverty, Legal delay, Unrequited Love and, as my title suggests, the hope of better things to come.

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

A pity then, that Dickens did not write about University life.  It was not part of his personal history, of course.

But what if he had?

Would the themes  be familiar to him?  Misery, Bankruptcy, Debt, Hypocrisy, Poverty, Legal delay, Unrequited Love, and, as my title suggests, the hope of better things to come?

Happy Christmas to both of my readers.

Practice what you teach

Business Schools have long been teaching about globalisation and technological and business model disruption - the sort of thing that has consigned the shopping experience to history.  But how many have applied that teaching to their own practice?

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Yes, it was a great adventure in the 1960s to go shopping with Mum, to visit the various separate emporiums (emporia?) in our local town, where she was greeted as a valued customer and known personally by staff members  (actually my Auntie Edna worked in one of the shops too).  The traditional skills of the shopkeeper were in choosing the right selection of products for the market and locality they served.  Human memory, careful record keeping and building relationships with families and generations ensured repeat business.  But it could not be scaled up and the corporate learning was slow.

Don't get me wrong.  The AI capabilities of firms like Amazon, their prodigious memory and their relationship with us via the data we freely give them, make them appear like traditional shopkeepers - except, of course, they can scale up and they can, and do, learn very rapidly.

So, the Amazon Business School?  built on the capabilities of digital technology, delivering bespoke education, flexibly and in a variety of ways.  What could possibly go wrong?