...another common feature of the new products that will eventually disrupt an industry’s primary market: Initially, they aren’t very good. Sony’s cheap, staticky, and easily breakable plastic radios seemed safe to ignore. The Apple I, introduced in 1976, hardly seemed a harbinger of doom to the managers of IBM’s mainframe monsters. So it is no surprise today to read college presidents denigrating MOOCs and the cheap, no-frills degrees being rolled out in Texas and Florida. You get what you pay for! Look at the huge non-completion rate for MOOCs! Online interaction can’t replicate the true college experience! (Even if the tab for the latter runs in the tens of thousands of dollars.) Overlooked in this slough of disdain, however, is an important stage of disruptive innovation. Left alone in markets largely ignored by industry leaders, upstart innovators can refine their products and introduce new versions, steadily improving quality while retaining the price advantage and other features that make them attractive to underserved customers. It is that period of refinement that eventually produces the real giant-killers. New technology and its adaptation to markets proceeds in waves of innovation. The clunky Apple I sold just a couple hundred units, but the elegant Macintosh, introduced twenty years later, ransacked the computing industry. That’s why the shortcomings of MOOCs today should be of little comfort to the higher education establishment.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:00:12 +0000
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