This lengthy and yet highly important article in my view forms the basis of a really important discussion that is now occuring globally. Here Tapschott and Williams offer a cogent and compelling plan for re-inventing universities for 21st Century. Read this article and forward it to every single person you know is involved in education. "Encyclopedias, newspapers, and record labels have a lot in common. They all are in the business of producing content. They recruit, manage, and compensate capable producers. Their products are composed of atoms — books, papers, CDs, DVDs — and are costly to create and distribute. Their products are proprietary, and they take legal action against those who infringe their intellectual property. Because they create unique value, their customers pay them, and they have revenue. Their business is possible because of scarcity: quality news, information, knowledge, learning, art.

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This is no idle statement. Read the opening statement from the Harvard Business Centenary Global Business Summit "Business Education in 21st Century. ...On the whole, MBA programs are in decline. Their value is being questioned, and they are seen as overly emphasizing analytics rather than skill development and experiences. Deans, executives, and recruiters identified four main areas where current MBA programs are falling short: leadership; globalization; communication/presentation skills; and problem identification in ambiguous environments... It came as a shock to The Creative Leadership Forum to see our own research so strongly validated on the failure of business school education to provide practical business skills by the most famous business school brand globally. And the trend is not just in America. Since the global financial crisis in November 2008, Australia's leading business schools have had dramatic drops in attendance of up to 70%

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Below is the preamble to an 80 minute live video presentation made at the Harvard's Centenary Global Business Summit on bsuiness education in 21st Century. In addition, you can download an executive summary of the lecture here. Overview On the whole, MBA programs are in decline. Their value is being questioned, and they are seen as overly emphasizing analytics rather than skill development and experiences. Deans, executives, and recruiters identified four main areas where current MBA programs are falling short: leadership; globalization; communication/presentation skills; and problem identification in ambiguous environments. In response, MBA programs are innovating and experimenting to change the MBA experience, and to help business education regain its relevance and value. They are changing their curricula and are attempting to make the learning experience more interactive, engaging, global, and experiential.

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Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University, describes a new model for learning and working in what he calls the Collaborative Age at the Apple Education Leadership Summit

This is genuinely interesting and indepth paper, regardless of all its biases, prepared by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Youth Sport and Education in 2000 on the evolution and working componets of corporate universities in Australia. It is worth reading this paper against the current failure of university business schools.