We live blended lives.

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa

This week’s issues of The Economist and Fortune dedicate respective articles about the current challenges posed by the digital world to the media industry. We are going towards a business world where "what you supply matters far more than how you supply it" a world with "an abundance of virtually costless ways to supply consumers with what they want to watch, whenever they want it", in the words of The Economist.

Fortune magazine interviews Mr. Bob Iger, The Disney CEO, who announces the search for a new business model on similar lines. The digital revolution, in the words of Iger, "is creating an even more voracious appetite for content". The net winners of these transformations will probably be content producers, and the potential losers, as Fortune’s journalist Marc Gunther anticipates, will be current broadcasters and traditional channels of distribution.

Those articles made me think again about the implications of the digital revolution in education and management education in particular. One of the key questions that b-school’s deans should ask themselves is "How am I driving my school into the digital world?" Of course, this question has consequences not only in the field of learning methodologies, but in the rest of the processes and activities run by b-schools.

Certainly, many of the classical myths on management education are questioned nowadays. Look at the following equation, which many people believe intuitive and right:

          E-learning = Low quality, cheap

How many of you would subscribe that equivalence? I do not, for one.

First, most top b-schools, even the most recalcitrant, are already combining face-to-face methodologies with those of e-learning, via on-line campuses, interactive communication, multimedia case studies, video-conferences etc. Therefore, e-learning is already part of the stuff of MBA programmes: it is not a matter of black and white, on line versus off-line methodologies, anymore; it is just a matter of intensity and integration within the other elements of the programme. Furthermore, some players are even demonstrating that e-learning offerings can be of the highest quality and produce the same or even better results in terms of learning productivity, developing analytical skills, interaction and networking with other participants. In addition, e-learning has the advantage of being better adaptable to a given student's circumstances of time and geographical location. All this has a clear consequence: today, some of the best blended educational offerings are more expensive than the traditional face-to-face ones because they provide better quality and are better adaptable to customer’s needs.

These new and competitive forms of e-learning result from in an improved conception of how we view management and understand our lives. "We live blended lives" said David Standen to me a few days ago-a colleague at my school- and the education we receive should also have that blended nature.

Comments

[aldamiz]

Excellent post and thanks for the references to The Economist / Fortune articles, will get them.

All content going digital, more and more devices with connectivity to easily access this content, and communication costs going down so we can contribute and share opinions really fast... with people who we do not necessarily know. More than 70% of my meetings take place online. Imagine when connectivity becomes as available as electricity, when TV & mobile devices really become the entry point to the digital world.

We are lucky to be living this revolution, to be living blended lives!

[Zach Owens]

I believe that an often overlooked benefit to e-learning is the student becoming familiar with and comfortable using advanced technology as a communication medium. As more and more companies large and small start doing business with remote partners, employees and customers it is increasingly more important that managers and executives are proficient in using the communication tools in this new "blended" world.

[Paul Jones]

On good thing about e-learning is that if you loose the track of a thread of thought or explanation you can go back afterwards and catch up.

I know two who got a new job having put on their CV that they were studying for an on-line masters from one of the top busines schools. They were able to start a new job with a better salary and studied in the evenings. They don't have much time for a social life but they are not bored to tears in their jobs and dare I mention it, kept up with their mortgage payments.

It is hard to know about the quality of the course as they are not going to say it's low.