Innovation in the Classroom Studying Technologly Disruption

At Harvard, students study business cases of companies that have already resolved a situation and learn from past successes and failures... here at Suffolk University we are jumping into the industry disruption and studying it in Real Time. ("Real Time Case Study") There are no answers for the strategy questions we are studying - the companies and the industry (textbook publishing) we are studying are wrestling with them just as we are. And we are sharing our information with them. This is an opportunity that we are providing to senior business students that would elsewhere most likely be available only to MBA students.

What is different is that we are actually participating in the industry disruption that we are studying. This creates a unique experience where the students are actually studying the market which is themselves.

We have turned the traditional educational model inside out. Instead of going out to study these businesses and the market, we have brought the market into the classroom by explicitly taking on the characteristics of the target market for e-textbooks. To make the situation more of an immersion, these college student teams are using the technology and "being the market" which they are developing strategies to support. One team each has Sony Readers, Amazon Kindles, CourseSmart online textbooks, or paper textbooks. The remaining team is the "wild card" or entrepreneurs who have the freedom to enter wherever they see the greatest business opportunity in the textbook publishing market.

Teams are competing against each other and against the market on a field where all the rules are changing - profit pools, distribution channels, retail bookstores - there is no "level playing field". What is challenging for the students is that there is no one "winning strategy". Depending on their business goal, there can be more than one "winner"; this could be an eReader maker, a publisher, or a content provider.

In our class, we are following a structured approach to study management strategy, but the results of the discussions are anything but structured. In the discussions, the teams present aspects of their strategy and each team harvests the "wisdom of the crowd" to advancing each of their own strategies as they interactively learn more about the market, their capabilities and environment. Like in the real market, information reveals itself as soon as it is created, and each team must adjust its strategy to respond.