Thinking Outside the Box

I suppose it’s helpful to occasionally have your paradigms challenged. In that spirit, I would submit this Forbes blog from several months ago that discusses the CIO role being ‘under fire.’ There are several good points brought up in the posting and I thought I’d mention a few and tie them to thoughts I’m having… I know, dangerous, right?

* Consumer technology “out-innovating” enterprise technology – This has become increasingly evident in the adoption of smartphones and consumer-designed tablet-style devices. No brand names mentioned, nor do they need to be. For that matter, students and staff are no longer impressed with that full-featured desktop or laptop computer. They go to any electronics store and get technology thahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift has comparable specifications or, at minimum, can do what they want to do.

* Technology is advancing faster than we can adopt it – We’ve mounted projectors and televisions in classroom, installed document cameras, installed wireless infrastructure and made other countless investments. Some, like structured cabling, could definitely be considered a long-term investment. Others… like the A/B/G wireless we had to have, is quickly replaced with N-series wireless and, soon enough, will be replaced with gigabit or multi-gigabit WiFi.

* Several shifts in thinking need to occur – Rattling through them quickly… the pace of change is accelerating. That means that expectations need to change. Lengthy technology plans are disrupted by this change. Replacing technology simply because it’s dated may not be the smart move.

The success criteria should be the business value and not the adoption rate. We’ve fought for years to make sure that every classroom has the same tools, every teacher is trained to the same level and that we’re all moving in lock-step in the same direction. Yet we teach to students of different ages about any number of different subjects and interests. Is the ‘business value’ the same in the high school history class as it is in a primary-grade class? Probably not, but the technology is often similar for both rooms.

We should try to move technology acquisitions from capex to opex. Some have done this via leasing of hardware and infrastructure. For districts that have convinced their boards to do this, things have seemingly gone well. The infrastructure does not have the glitz of the user device and is often tougher to get funded. Infrastructure purchases should perhaps be thought of like a utility and paid for in that fashion.

* “Learn to fail fast and move on” – Good quote from that blog post. One of our biggest struggles is to evaluate the success of an initiative. Often, we’re asked to move on to the next project without really evaluating the previous one. That said, though, the changing technology landscape is forcing us to be willing to try different things. That will be an adjustment, but an equally difficult adjustment will be the discipline to jettison an initiative as it is made irrelevant by little business impact.