8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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JUN 12, 2014 @ 9:55 AM 5,137 VIEWS

Michael Porter andClayton ChristensenAre Both Wrong AboutFinding the Future ofBusiness Education

This article is by Marty Neumeier,director of transformation at LiquidAgency, and author of Metaskills:Five Talents for the Robotic Age andThe 46 Rules of Genius; AnInnovator’s Guide to Creativity.

The New York Times recently pittedstrategy gurus Michael Porter andClayton Christian against each otheron a thorny question: How shouldHarvard Business School handle boththe threat and the opportunity of

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8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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online disruption? Or, put anotherway, what’s to keep new distance­learning outfits such as Coursera andedX from repositioning Harvard as anoverpriced dinosaur? In the article,“B­School, Disrupted,” business writerJerry Useem uses the two strategiststo highlight opposing views.

In one corner is Michael Porter, theHarvard professor who wrote thecanonical works Competitive Strategyand Competitive Advantage. In theother corner is Clay Christensen, alsoa Harvard professor, author of TheInnovator’s Dilemma and theInnovator’s Solution. Porter argues forevolution, not revolution, believingthat the school should modernizearound the edges while preserving thecore. Christensen maintains thatrevolution is inevitable, arguing thatthe school should disrupt itself beforeits competitors do. Neither of thesepositions is surprising, given thetheories on which both men havespent their time.

Harvard seems to have chosen aPorter­like strategy. It’s now buildinga program called HBX, conceived as a$1,500 “pre­MBA” online course toprepare students to speak “thelanguage of business.” The beauty ofthis approach, say its proponents, isthat it makes money withoutcannibalizing key profit centers, suchas the MBA and executive education

8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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programs, which have brought in aquarter of a billion dollars per year.

HBX makes total sense on the surface:Replicate the case­study method—Harvard Business School’s secretsauce—using technology that canreach large numbers of students withfewer professors. Not only will theschool make a profit with HBX, it canturn around and make another profitby feeding selected graduates into its$100,000 MBA program. On theapparent strength of this strategy, theschool has made an investment in asophisticated studio setup that mimicsthe tiered­style Harvard classroom.

According to the article, the HBXfacility will place a computer screenwith a student’s image and voice,instead of the live student, in each ofits 60 “seats.” A professor will thenstand in the “pit” and orchestrate case­study discussions as if the studentswere physically together in the room.The past is thus preserved, and thefuture fended off.

What could go possibly wrong?

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8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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A lot, according to Christensen: “Ithink we’ve overshot the needs of thecustomer.” He believes it would bebetter to start cheap and simple—justget it out there and improve it on thefly. He also believes that any newonline program needs a bit ofseparation from the mainstreamHarvard experience, so its handsaren’t tied by old norms and the needto make immediate profits.Eventually, if the Christensenapproach works, the new model wouldsupplant the traditional brick­and­mortar model. This was the road nottaken by Kodak, he says, when itcontinued to invest in film instead ofbuilding its future on digital.

My own view as an innovator is thatneither approach will produce alasting competitive advantage.Ironically, the reason for this can betraced to the very teaching model onwhich the school was founded: thecase­study method.

Case­study education gets manythings right. For example, itencourages students to look to the pastfor patterns that could shed light on acurrent situation. It asks futureleaders to support their strategic andtactical decisions with factualevidence, not intuition alone. And itcreates a rich basis for discussion, sothat students and their professors canlearn from one another in a fluid,

8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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interactive way.

But case­study education gets onething wrong. It gives learners theimpression that the answer to acurrent problem can be found in thepast. Certainly the past can informmany new situations. But if the goal isto innovate, as Harvard needs to do,the past can also be mute, or evenmisleading. It puts one­size­fits­allboundaries on a problem, therebylimiting originality. It’s a bit likeshopping for clothes on the ready­to­wear rack when what you really needis a custom­designed suit. Relying onprecedent can lead to best­practicethinking instead new­practicethinking.

Given the need to innovate,Christensen’s advice—get new ideasout there cheaply and let them findtheir way—seems more practical thanPorter’s top­down approach, in whicha key concern of the new program is toreinforce the existing strategy. Butto me, a brand designer, bothapproaches seem incomplete.

The Porter solution appears to be aneducated guess based on a faulty brief.The brief, formulated by the dean asguiding principles, included thesethree items:

1) HBX should be economically self­sustaining (it should function as aprofit center).

8/15/2015 Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education ­ Forbes

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2) It should not substitute for the MBAprogram (don’t cannibalize existingrevenue streams).

3) It should replicate the school’sdiscussion­based learning model(reinforce Harvard’s historicaldifferentiator).