Taking Higher Education Forward with Disruptive Technology

Ashish Desai, Assistant Director of Multimedia Technologies, University Information Technologies, Villanova University

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Ashish Desai, Assistant Director of Multimedia Technologies, University Information Technologies, Villanova University

WANTED: Platforms and Innovation

Since March 2020, COVID has forced Higher Education institutions and students to wrestle with the authenticity of experiences. Fast forward two years, lessons learned, exercises through studies and committees, and the clarity of the frustration with the experience of teaching, learning, and college attendance is inescapable. The undeniable consensus is that interactions with friction, non-intuitive function are the bright line between enjoyable authentic experiences and the tools that we used were functional but ultimately missing something. Other industries have transitioned to seamless, authentic, modern from siloed and artificial by building modern platforms and marketplaces. The Ed Tech and Higher Education space should follow suit.

Platforms, Platforms, Platforms

Though there have been incremental changes at the margins, institutions need genuinely disruptive innovation that unifies technology, allowing a shared experience built on the values like community, progress, advancement, growth, and knowledge. Unsatisfactorily, institutions, students, alums, faculty, and staff cobble together a hodgepodge of technologies attempting to immerse themselves in the digital world. Modern platforms and marketplaces offered by Apple, Amazon, and others provide users with a frictionless medium. A better experience exists. We need disruptive innovation to deliver to our problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and innovators within the walls of Higher Education.

Singular function software like office productivity suites have started to show promise. But a single unified platform for the Higher Education experience is nowhere to be seen. Our best tools lack immersion and each feature has its delay and learning curve that add barriers between wanting, doing, and experiencing. Friction makes the digital experience feel inauthentic.The history of innovation leads me to believe that a solution is possible and that it need not be solely reliant on unrealized technological advances like distributed processing, custom silicon codecs, 5G, and lightweight display technologies.

New service or business models, combined with the accessible technologies that integrate vertically and horizontally, enabling “authentic” interactions, will be the first steps to solving the experience predicament.

Current Status: Stuck

We are in a cycle of traditional delivery models and legacy market strategies. The best attempts are impossibly expensive, complex, or seductive mirages of a brighter future through open source and modularity. Internal technology organizations are scarred by their previous experiences, and end users empowered by choice are captured in loops of cynicism and enthusiasm. From the general to the niche, platforms like the Apple App Store, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and UpWork address these issues by enabling frictionless connections between consumers, producers, and enablers.

For entrepreneurs, the global Higher Education market capitalization is about 1.9 trillion dollars, with 100 million potential adult learners


It is not a failure of imagination, recognition, or capability inherently deficient within Higher Education from which corporations are immune. Our institutions have produced the intellectual capital and the research used to launch and develop trillion-dollar industries. Instead, technology organizations are exceedingly limited in resources, staff, focus, energy, and budget and understandably devoted to current academic and business needs. Despite honest efforts, institutions, I.T. organizations, and innovation ventures, as a practical matter, have struggled to deliver on disruptive innovation. Fortune 500 firms struggle equally with far more resources and encouragement from shareholders. For companies and institutions, each invests in uncertain outcomes instead of what users need most immediately. Thus failures, in reality, are logical and expected. The inherent difficulty of disruptive innovation should not dissuade institutions or innovators.

Getting Unstuck

Anecdotes might build a shaky foundation, but the collective work of the late Harvard Business School faculty, Clayton Christensen, can be your keystone. Start experimenting, failing, and experiment again and continue that process over and over again. If we reflect, I believe we will see that this process has already delivered success to our organizations. We teach this to our students and give advanced degrees to those who master it. Second, external sources of disruption can be untethered by precedent, legacy, problems, needs, and goals. Internal innovators must also be free to pursue without limitation. Skunk Works ventures will attract bright minds that are intrinsically motivated, unafraid to fail, think differently, comfortable with longer time horizon efforts, and eager to solve big problems. Bold visions and audacious goals attract and retain top talent. I believe Higher Education has more at its disposal than is realized.

For entrepreneurs, the global Higher Education market capitalization is about 1.9 trillion dollars, with 100 million potential adult learners. You have the ability to deliver a platform, a marketplace, and a pipeline to provide premium experiences, leveraging a globally diverse, distributed, and growing developer community, scaled to match volume or customization to micro-target audiences without the usual penalties of opportunity costs for niche market solutions. I believe a frictionless modern technology platform that connects institutions, students, faculty, alums, mentors, coaches, and advisors, easily, quickly, and productively would be beneficial to all, amplifying what Higher Education does well without it being antithetical to its core mission. Innovation can be disruptive without being destructive.

Let’s get started.



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