Over the past quarter century new information technologies have transformed nearly every sector of our economy, upsetting market power for firms, and creating abundant choice, interactivity and personalization for consumers. The one industry remarkably absent from this transformation is higher education. COVID has accelerated a long overdue transformation of our market, and it’s time for us to imagine what abundant choice, interactivity, and personalization could look like in the context of higher education. In this talk, Michael D. Smith draws on his prior research into the transformation of the entertainment industry, and his current research into the delivery of online education to address three key questions facing the academy today:
- Why do new technologies pose a unique threat to our established business model?
- How is the transformation of higher education likely to play out in the market?
- What should educational institutions do to respond to this opportunity?
Email us at digitalinitiative@hbs.edu for information on attending this seminar.
This was a joint seminar with the field experiments seminar.