The Future of Education

Globalization and shifts in technology and demography put increasing pressure on universities to redefine both their business models and how they fulfill their traditional mission. As the education market breaks open, competition for the best and most innovative educational programs increases rapidly.

A key strategy for universities to change the way they are doing business has been entrepreneurialism, an option which has generated intense academic interest. However, the approach remains challenging, with multiple changes required on five key strategic areas of university management, (entrepreneurship) education being a key success factor (1).

As students and quality programs remain the key asset for universities, irrespective their new business models, a question remains to be answered when taking the entrepreneurial path: how can we better formulate and understand the needs of our customers – the students – to provide truly innovative and entrepreneurial educational programs?

The present study proposes an innovation management approach by recasting student needs for education as “jobs to be done”, goals and outcomes which customers seek to achieve by various means, including “employing” products and services”(2). Developed as a tool for increasing the effectiveness of “voice of the customer” systems, Outcome Driven Innovation has not been employed yet in educational management, in spite of a track record that includes the development of the cardiac stent, the fastest growing medical product in terms of sales.

The study has focused on the needs of students in the West University of Timisoara, Romania, in respect with entrepreneurship education across all Faculties. To inform the development of interdisciplinary courses and educational programs, as well as the mission of the University’s Entrepreneurship Center (currently in development), we have interviewed students with various degrees of entrepreneurial intention, from those having no intention or who have not crossed the ideation stage, to students running their own businesses. This stage has led to the identification of over 40 “jobs to be done”, followed by a university-wide survey asking participants to rate the importance, as well their own success in completing each job, highlighting unfulfilled needs and pointing the way in improving educational programs, building career development opportunities, establishing support services for accelerating the integration of young people into the world of work through entrepreneurship and self-employment, and preparing the next stage of developing income generating services for entrepreneurs and employers in the community.

References:
(1)Gibb, Alan – Exploring the synergistic potential in entrepreneurial university development: towards the building of a strategic framework, Annals of Innovation & Entrepreneurship . 2013, Vol. 2, p1-21. 21p
(2)Ulwick, Anthony, Bettencourt, Lance – Giving Customers a Fair Hearing, MIT Sloan Management Review, Apr 01, 2008.