Wanted: Disruptive Innovators

Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger recently received Chief Executive magazine’s “2014 CEO of the Year” award. The magazine outlined the tremendous hurdles Iger had encountered after becoming CEO of Disney in 2005 and described his three-pronged approach for dealing with these issues.

1. Invest most of the company’s capital in creating high-quality, branded content and experiences
2. Embrace technology and use it aggressively to enhance the quality of products, and this the consumer experience
3. Get closer to customers by becoming more efficient as a company

My favorite quotes from the article:
“Technology had to become a significant middle name for the company.“
“…transformative change was not expected from an insider...”

In a related article in Bloomberg, Iger was commended on his stewardship of Disney by a member of the selection committee as being “...a disruptive innovator in taking the entertainment industry to another level using media and new technology.”

The lesson in all of this for me: to continue to be successful, even Disney had to change with the times!

• Technology is changing our daily personal lives.
• Technology is here to stay.
• Technology is going to keep changing at an ever increasing rate.

Now ask teachers these questions:

• Is technology changing the way you teach daily?
• Is technology in your classroom to stay?
• Are you going to keep updating the way you use technology in the classroom?

Suddenly, there is a fracturing of the faith, and a wall of resistance of various degrees becomes apparent:

• That’s not the way we’ve always done it.
• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
• We have state accountability assessments.
• No time. We are too busy!

Perhaps educators need “technology” to become our  “middle name”
Perhaps education needs transformative change from the insiders
Perhaps educators all need to become “disruptive innovators”!
After all, even education has to change with the times.