Book Review; Disrupting Class

Disrupting Class

Being a member of a family of past and present educators, I picked up Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn.

If you have any responsibility for learning, inside or outside of the education system, (i.e. Human Resources or training staff)this book is worth a read.

The text applies Mr. Christensens’ disruptive innovations theories to the (primarily Western) education system.

The book does not require familiarity with his previous books on disruption, but I found knowing them was beneficial in understanding – in depth, the disruptive innovation context that the authors are describing.

My only issue would be that major projects are often late and cost more than they should. So in the student centric timeline estimated by the authors, I would extend that timeline until all boomers are retired, and even the first waves of Gen-X retireing.

Maybe then we see the much needed context changes described by the authors.

Keep Learning

This little note is for the SMB Technology Guru’s.

A recent post by Merrill Dubrow President and CEO of MARC Research brought this to mind.

As written about on this site, In the IT space, your mantra must be to Keep Learning. Never stop. And that does not just mean the newest server or programming language of the day. Keeping up with the latest pure “technology” issues will lead you to be a great IT “electrician” but to be in the next wave of IT workers, we will have to be part data steward, part relationship manager, and add to that part business process expert.

As Merrill Dubrow states,

Read all the time! In fact never stop reading. Concentrate on things happening in your industry, companies and names in the news. Focus on best practices that can help you with your job!

In my opinion, you must learn your industry and your industries pressures. You must know as much of your industry dynamics as any one else in your organization. My employer is a managed training services provider with an extensive customer base in the automotive OEM industry.

You guessed it, the last year or so has been a crash course on learning theory, the automotive industry, and related issues.