A summary of the New Zealand Conference for Business and Technology
Last week I had the pleasure and privilege to MC the New Zealand Conference or Business and Technology. The conference represented the work that Aspire2 and its partners have put in to develop an influential research culture and highlight their first research Journal.
The theme for this year’s conference was about disruptive technologies with sub panel discussions on the impact technology has on learning and education. 26 Speakers, ten panellists and an impressive audience.
The mission of the conference was to bridge the gap between academia and industry, and we had business owners sharing insights and academics representing their research - both at the same conference which unfortunately doesn’t seem to happen often enough.
I believe it has brought both of these sectors together in a fantastic way, and I wanted to share the learnings that I took away.
Shift the attitudes and aspirations
To be ready for disruption and the future of work, we must address the skill shortage in the technology sector, but to do so, we need to start by shifting our attitudes and aspirations.
Continue to develop the non-technical skills
We need to continue to develop non-technical skills. As we have learned from our industry speakers, there is a significant shortage of non-technical skills. The particular skills that are short are strategy, self-awareness, confidence, leadership, communication and collaboration (this is not an exhaustive list).
We also have unknown skills that we're uncertain about at this stage as what Adam Barker called “The unknown, unknown skills”. To be prepared for unknown unknowns, we must understand how to manage risk better and how to plan for uncertainty.
Provide applied learning
We need to provide practical education to our students from the beginning. Meaning that rather than waiting for year two and year three to enable students to apply their learnings on projects, we must include applied learning from day one. This allows students to get hands-on experience of what it means to work in their field of choice, which brings us to the other challenge of developing commercial awareness in our young learners in technical areas.
Make the shift from just in time training to just behind education
As Ian Morrison suggested, just behind education is about letting learners go down their chosen path, but being behind them in case they need any access to any learning, coaching, or support to enable them better in their learning experience and performance.
Rethink the way we engage students
We also need to shift away from the way we engage students. We need to take the emphasis from teaching to a focus on learning. As I have learned in my experience working with business and technology, entrepreneurship cannot be taught; however, entrepreneurship can be learned.
How can we shift the way we engage students to put more emphasis on learning rather than on what we want to teach?
Learn from case studies of disruption
We were provided with excellent case studies of what it looks like when large companies are disrupted. Shailan Patel gave a fantastic case study of the culture change and disruption that MYOB went through a few years back. We can take a lot of learning from what happened in these large organisations and directly apply them to the education sector
Be at the forefront of innovation
We need to be at the forefront of what is happening. We can't necessarily wait for research to come out to show us what works and what doesn't. We need to be at the forefront of innovation. We need to trial and error. We need to learn to fail fast. Which may come with complications for more substantial organisations but those who dare are the ones rewarded.
At the end of it all, it is the user who decides who wins as is the case in other industries where purchasing power has shifted from institutions and organisations to the user, the end customer.
It's the same shifts that have disrupted many industries in recent years and may affect the education industry.
Once the power shifts to the customer, it will be the education providers who best suit the learner’s demands that will stand firm in the changing market.
We don't know where that disruption will come from, but we can plan for it and plan to manage for risk. This can be in the form of diversification as we learned from case studies such as Harvard and Stanford who hedged on the MOOCs platform.
Be agile, embrace learning, and you will be ready for the unknowns even if they are genuinely unknown.
Be ready for disruption,
Flavio Hangarter
P.S. I write weekly tips to help tech ventures GET, KEEP and GROW customers. See below!
