The Innovative University - (Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education (Hardcover)) by Clayton M Christensen & Henry J Eyring (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Innovative University illustrates how higher education can respond to the forces of disruptive innovation, and offers a nuanced and hopeful analysis of where the traditional university and its traditions have come from and how it needs to change for the future. Through an examination of Harvard and BYU-Idaho as well as other stories of innovation in higher education, Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring decipher how universities can find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions.

• Offers new ways forward to deal with curriculum, faculty issues, enrollment, retention, graduation rates, campus facility usage, and a host of other urgent issues in higher education
• Discusses a strategic model to ensure economic vitality at the traditional university
• Contains novel insights into the kind of change that is necessary to move institutions of higher education forward in innovative ways

This book uncovers how the traditional university survives by breaking with tradition, but thrives by building on what it's done best.

From the Back Cover

The language of crisis is nothing new in higher education--for years critics have raised alarms about rising tuition, compromised access, out of control costs, and a host of other issues. Yet, though those issues are still part of the current crisis, it is not the same as past ones. For the first time, disruptive technologies are at work in higher education. For most of their histories, traditional universities and colleges have had no serious competition except from institutions with similar operating models. Now, though, there are disruptive competitors offering online degrees. Many of these institutions operate as for-profit entities, emphasizing marketable degrees for working adults. Traditional colleges and universities have valuable qualities and capacities that can offset those disruptors' advantages--but not for everyone who aspires to higher education, and not without real innovation. How can institutions of higher education think constructively and creatively about their response to impending disruption?

Written by Clayton Christensen, the father of the theory of disruptive innovation, and his colleague, Henry J. Eyring, The Innovative University offers a nuanced and hopeful analysis of the traditional university and its DNA. It explores how and why universities must change to ensure future success.

Throughout the book Christensen and Eyring show what it takes to apply Christensen's acclaimed model of disruptive innovation to a higher education environment. Through a penetrating examination of the histories and current transformations of two very different universities--Harvard and BYU-Idaho--and using other illustrative examples of innovation in higher education, The Innovative University explores how universities can find innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions and thereby save themselves from decline. The book explores the strategic choices and alternative ways in which traditional universities can change to ensure their ongoing economic vitality. To avoid the pitfalls of disruption and turn the scenario into a positive and productive one, universities must re-engineer their institutional DNA from the inside out.

The Innovative University reveals how the traditional university survives by breaking with tradition, but thrives by building upon what it's done best

Review Quotes

"Scholars will find this work a good point of departure for asking more pointed questions about how nest to meet the demands of an increasingly disparate population of students (and potential students) who have different needs and expectations from previous generations of college-going individuals." -- Journal of College Student Retention Vol. 15 (3)

About the Author

CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank. He is the author of many books, including The Innovator's Dilemma, and has applied his theory to K-12 education in Disrupting Class and to medicine in The Innovator's Prescription.

HENRY J. EYRING serves as an administrator at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He is a former strategy consultant at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Monitor Company.