DISRUPTIVE EDUCATION FORGING NEW MARKETS

In today's disruptive era, education institutions are under more pressure than ever before to underpin fundamental changes to the industrial revolution education system, curriculum and practice, with digital and innovative technologies. As a result, schools are increasingly departing from the sole focus of legacy, in house ICT, to new forms of cloud productivity and mobility offered through outsourced IT partner engagements.

Schools that are succeeding in these areas see beyond the economic incentives of developing roll, as this has waning effect, by entwining game-changing technology with transformative educational choices – embracing disruption by linking the school’s prospects and survival to national and international trend.

Savvy education-centred-institutions, therefore, are now increasingly influencing and driving key IT decisions with new educational needs; using agile methods to shift away from legacy technology practice; navigating engagement processes away traditional ICT vendors. However, as the ICT industry is also predicted to go through further and huge transformation next year, with major players accelerating cloud and mobility innovations, forming just two of a vast array of thrusts that are driving significant change, disruption is raising questions over the future of traditional ICT vendors. As a result, this is compromising the ability for schools to successfully gain or adopt the oft-promised actual disruptive technologies.

As both a cause and as a consequence of disruption, new consumption and ICT-AS-A-Service models, which are taking shape across every dimension, are prohibiting the once long term, lucrative, ICT contract. These contracts are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, presenting significant risks the traditional ICT vendor business model because engagements are thwart with technical vs. outcome translation difficulties. And, as some ICT vendors have struggled to maintain the specialist and strategic skillsets required to deal with a new engagement conversation and or the vendor’s rapid unfashionableness.

Schools, increasingly, are opting for engagements with strategic ICT partners. The “internet of things”, advances with wireless technologies, changing future work patterns and new-market labour needs; and a demand to provide instant, real-time, feedback through more sophisticated learning – is changing the human talent develop needs of New Zealand and, as a result, changing the school education-ICT needs. Methods of engagement are changing. Accordingly, schools are demanding engagements, therefore, that dispense with the nostalgic approach of requirement gathering or statement of work approaches by focusing on both parties renewing the strategic performance drivers of the school. This collaboration provides significant value to the ICT vendor as this renewal also renews the performance driver of the vendor.

This is a cyclic process of partnering which drives a practice of establishing practical objectives to continually improve the educational success of each departmental unit. This enables both participants to focus primarily on the specific end game activities, technology innovations and services that are the most strategically important or add the highest value.The vendor, as a result of the both the necessity and opportunity to change its model, enjoys the spoils of significant market differentiating, intellectual property development spoils. The reason being, strategic-education-vendor-partners are engaged participants are no longer order takers. They are deeply entrenched participants in a schools strategic and change journey, using new expertise, as the catalyst to transition the school’s complex processes. This includes reorganisation and restructuring, complying with legacy regulations while trying to drive a relevant and agile education model to create exciting forms of curriculum innovation, digitisation and development.

The economic viability of the new partner approach stands out from the declines in the traditional-ICT vendor markets. Schools are able to redeploy ICT investments to alternative more viable models. The new partner approach becomes evidence based and is therefore demonstrable in other sectors than education. This is because the new-partnering model provides the vendor with the ability to deliver green fields, market ready and entry technologies ahead of the game. Differentiation from competition is gained through the evidence and intellectual property it has gained through partnership; as well as cultivating and seasoning the talent to establish broader strategic-education partnerships.

This is an increasing and credible trend because, in returning to the primary point, the school (or schools) and partners are both striving to cope with the same disruption through differentiation.

The question is, as New Zealand plummets down international innovation and education rankings, how long and by what scale can both sectors ignore the same truth?