47 FORUM FOR THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Historically, higher
education has avoided
competitive disruption.
One reason for this past
immunity is the power
of prestige in the higher
education marketplace,
where the quality of the
product is hard to measure.
Now with more focus on
outcomes and the steady
improvement of low-cost
online learning technology,
the prospect of competitive
disruption is real.
Because new entrants to
an industry typically begin
at the bottom of a market,
selling simple, affordable
products to easily satised
consumers, the bigger-
and-better tendencies in
established institutions can
blind them to disruptive
technologies.
Traditional universities
have spent the past century
getting bigger and better,
following standards set by
the great research institu-
tions, especially Harvard.
In the past, that strategy
of emulation proved highly
successful. But as costs
have climbed, so too has
the number of students for
whom a college education
is too expensive. Likewise,
online programs have
become an increasingly
attractive choice.
Universities that survive
todays disruptive chal-
lenges will be those that
recognize and honor their
strengths while innovating
with optimism. University
communities that commit to
real innovation, to changing
their DNA from the inside
out, may nd extraordinary
rewards. The key is to
understand and build upon
their past achievements
while being forward-looking.
The downfall of many successful and seemingly
invincible companies has been precipitated by
a disruptive innovationthat is, an innovation
that makes a complicated and expensive prod-
uct simpler and cheaper and therefore attracts
a new set of customers. Disruptive companies
establish a foothold in the market, expand that
market dramatically, and then inexorably migrate
up the quality chain. Ultimately, they pin the
original leaders in the highest tiers of the mar-
ket, where there is simply not enough volume
to sustain them all. In higher education, online
courses now typically offer lower-end and more
convenient access to courses that can improve
students credentials or help them switch careers,
which is often precisely what the students cus-
tomers want to accomplish by enrolling.
Generally, traditional colleges and universities
(hereafter called traditional universities) havent
considered themselves in competition with these
new entrants, many of which operate as for-prot
entities and emphasize marketable skills and de-
grees for working adults. However, the innovative
learning technologies the new entrants employ
have signicant potential to serve young students
as well, especially given these digital natives
comfort with online communication.
Fortunately, Americas traditional universi-
ties have unique competitive advantages. They
perform vital functions that other institutions
do not. As Jonathan Cole has pointed out in his
book The Great American University, they are
founts of discoveryincluding many of the dis-
coveries that make high-quality, low-cost online
CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
HENRY J. EYRING, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY-IDAHO
The Innovative University:
Changing the DNA of Higher Education
1
This piece is largely reprinted from a paper published in 2011 by the American Council on Education as part of its Making
Productivity Real initiative, funded by Lumina Foundation and conducted in collaboration with the Forum for the Future of Higher
Education. That paper was based on The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out, by Henry
Eyring and Clayton Christensen (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
For most of their histories, traditional colleges and universities have had no serious
competition except from institutions with similar operating models. For the rst time, though, disruptive
technologies are at work in higher education as competitors are offering online courses and degrees.
Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
and Henry J. Eyring, vice president for advancement at Brigham Young UniversityIdaho, describe
the evolution of the widely inuential Harvard model, and note the disruptive potential of online degree
providers as evidenced by their divergence from that model. They encourage institutions to commit to
real innovation by changing their DNA from the inside out, and discourage them from trying to excel at
too much as they attempt to climb ahead of their competitors. Instead, they recommend that traditional
universities adopt a pattern of continuous innovation focused on their unique missionwithout undue
concern for either tradition or what other institutions are doing.
1
TAKE AWAYS
48
FORUM FUTURES 2012
learning possible. Traditional universities also preserve and re-
fresh cultural memory, helping society build on the wisdom
of the past as it embraces new possibilities. Perhaps most im-
portantly, they involve young students in these processes of
discovering and remembering, mentoring them in a special
community of scholars.
Two unique assets facilitate traditional universities in the
jobs of discovery, memory and mentoring. One is their physi-
cal campuses, built up over decades at great expense. The other
distinctive asset is the professoriate. The graduates of masters
and Ph.D. programs who enter academic life bring unusual
skill and commitment to their work. They choose the pursuit,
preservation, and sharing of knowledge over greater nancial
rewards to be had elsewhere. The learning environment they
create in their face-to-face classrooms, ofces, and laboratories
is uniquely valuable.
But the university learning environment is not invaluable
in the strict sense of the word. There is a price to be paid by
students, state and federal governments, donors, sponsors of
researchand by the very employees whose sacrice of high-
er pay elsewhere must be justied by the rewards of academic
life. Increasingly, many who pay those prices are judging them
to be too high. Given new competitive alternatives, that puts
traditional universities at a grave risk, their unique physical
and human assets notwithstanding.
The Tendency to Get Bigger and Better
Responding to the risks facing traditional universities requires
understanding not only their current competitive environ-
ment but also their evolutionary behavior. Like most organiza-
tions, universities resemble living organisms in an important
way: they seek not just to survive, but to grow and improve
in scale, scope and prestige. Once the typical organization has
more than a few employees and has experienced a degree of
success, predictable genetic tendencies switch on. These ten-
dencies start to dominate planning and investment processes,
driving the organization to make things bigger, better or both.
Diminishing in size or quality violates the genetic codeit
introduces a mutation unlikely to survive the natural institu-
tional response. Becoming bigger and better is in the genes.
Members of the higher education community readily rec-
ognize this tendency. With few institutional exceptions, uni-
versities continuously increase the quantity and quality of
what they do. Courses become more numerous and more spe-
cialized. New degree programs are created. New buildings are
added and older ones upgraded. The university seeks more-
qualied faculty members and entry into more prestigious
athletic conferences increases. Through a series of sustaining
innovations the universitys quality and costs grow with time,
as shown in Figure 1.
The universitys aversion to shrinking or simplifying is
more than just a matter of personal preference; it is driven
by institutional decision-making systems, individual rewards,
and culture. For example, no risk-averse department chair
can think seriously about cutting courses or degree programs.
Even if such a proposal could be pushed through the curricu-
lum committee, the only reward to the chair would be col-
legial ostracism. For similar reasons, no athletic director can
view dropping a popular sport or moving into a less-expensive
conference as a good career move, nor can a university presi-
dent take lightly the risk of offending a major donor who en-
visions a new building. Through mutually reinforcing formal
and informal systemsthe institutional DNA so to speak
the university demands bigger and better.
Though the Carnegie classication system reinforces this
tendency, it is by no means unique to higher education. Most
established organizations, including for-profit companies,
readily adopt innovations that show potential for enhancing
their size and standing. However, they are much less likely
to see the value of innovations that would reduce the price
a customer pays, especially when quality might be adversely
affected. As an illustration, the established makers of X-ray
equipment, General Electric, Siemens, and Phillips, quickly
adopted CT, MRI, and PET imaging technologies as they were
developed. Each of these new technologies allowed them to
make enhanced, more expensive equipment that vaulted them
ahead of the competition and generated better prot margins.
However, for thirty years the industry-leading companies
persistently overlooked the potential of ultrasound technol-
ogy, precisely because it was simpler and more affordable for
Figure 1: The Progress of Sustaining Innovations
Performance that
customers in the
mainstream market
can absorb
Performance
Time
Performance trajectory driven by
sustaining innovations
Most demanding customers
Least demanding customers
49 FORUM FOR THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
customers. The bigger-and-better tendencies built into these
companies institutional DNA, through systems such as prof-
itability-based compensation for executives and salespeople,
made ultrasound seem unattractive, because initially the im-
age quality was relatively low. Now, with technology perfor-
mance enhancements and with healthcare providers under
pressure to reduce costs, the makers of advanced ultrasound
equipment have a competitive advantage over more-expen-
sive imaging technologies, particularly in outpatient clinics
and other non-specialized care environments. The leaders in
ultrasound are disrupting the status quo in medical imaging.
The Risk of Disruption
Because new entrants to an industry typically begin at the bot-
tom of a market, selling simple, affordable products to easily
satised consumers, the bigger-and-better tendencies in estab-
lished institutions can blind them to disruptive technologies
such as ultrasound. This tendency on the part of incumbents
gives innovative entrants time to operate out of harms way;
they can perfect the new technology without interference from
resource-rich competitors. Thanks to this competitive grace
period, products that initially could be sold only to low-end
customers of no interest to the incumbents steadily improve
in quality.
That is what is happening in higher education. Tradition-
al universities have spent the past century getting bigger and
better, following standards set by the great research institu-
tions, especially Harvard. In the past, that strategy of emula-
tion proved highly successful. As community and state col-
leges slowly but steadily made themselves into universities in
the twentieth century, they brought higher education to the
masses and contributed to the advance of knowledge and of
social and economic welfare. Taxpayers and donors willingly
contributed to the cause, inspired by the institutional growth
and the benets that owed from it.
However, as the costs of this climb have grown so has the
number of students for whom a college education has be-
come too expensive. Consequently, an increasing number of
students are opting for online degree programs. Though they
might prefer the traditional campus experience, the conve-
nience of living at home, setting ones own schedule, and po-
tentially retaining a job makes the online option attractive.
Online learning is a disruptive innovation that allows these
students, who might not otherwise be able to attend college,
to earn a degree. (See Figure 2.)
Though online learning initially appealed primarily to
those unable to access traditional higher education, it is be-
coming more attractive to mainstream students. As repre-
sented conceptually in Figure 2, sustaining innovations are
gradually enhancing the online learning experience. These
enhancements include high-quality, low-cost videoconfer-
encing that allows students to work in groups as though
they were face-to-face, as well as computer simulations
through which they can enter virtual laboratories and man-
age virtual companies.
In addition, new-generation learning management systems
are customizing the curriculum in a way not possible in the
traditional classroom. For example, using algorithms similar
to those of commercial web sites that infer what an individual
web-surfer is likely to buy, these systems infer the ways that a
student learns best, based on his or her learning performance
and interactions with course materials. These systems can of-
fer remedial learning opportunities when a student is strug-
gling. They can also make recommendations to both students
and instructors about the types of content and the instruc-
tional strategies likely to work best. For example, a student
who learns better from video than from text can be offered
more of that medium.
Historically, higher education has avoided competitive dis-
ruption. One reason for this past immunity is the power of
prestige in the higher education marketplace, where the qual-
ity of the product is hard to measure. In the absence of compa-
rable measures of what universities produce for their students,
the well-respected institutions have a natural advantage. A re-
lated stabilizing force is the barrier to disruptive innovation
created by the accreditation process, which in the past made
conformance to tradition the price of entry to the industry.
Now, though, both accrediting bodies and state and fed-
eral governments are more focused on learning outcomes.
With the steady improvement of low-cost online learning
Figure 2: Disruptive Innovation
Performance that
customers in the
mainstream market
can absorb
Performance
Time
Performance trajectory of present technology
Most demanding customers
Least demanding customers
Performance trajectory of
disruptive technologies
50
FORUM FUTURES 2012
technology, the prospect of competitive disruption is real.
Mere budget cutting will not be enough. For the vast majority
of institutions, fundamental change is essential.
The DNA of the Great American University
The challenge that traditional universities face is not a lack of
uniquely valuable assets. Even with the advent of fully online
degree programs, there is a vital need for their physical cam-
puses and communities of scholars. The problem is that these
assets are being deployed in ways that most universities can-
not afford. Understanding how that has happened and what
to do about it requires understanding the history of one of the
worlds greatest universities, Harvard.
Between 1870 and the mid-1950s, Harvard established the
main features of the American research university. Until the
middle of the nineteenth century, Harvard was essentially a
small liberal arts college with associated professional schools
that students could enter without a college degree. Other than
the traditional summer break and a collection of small academic
departments, Harvard bore little resemblance to the modern re-
search university. However, three towering presidents, Charles
Eliot, Lawrence Lowell, and James Conant, changed that by en-
gineering the DNA of todays Harvard University and setting the
pattern that many American institutions have emulated.
Eliot, who was impressed by the discoveries of the great re-
search universities of Europe, sought to emulate and improve
upon their design. Beginning in the 1870s he created what be-
came the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; it undertook the
granting of Ph.D. degrees, and its faculty also took responsibil-
ity for Harvard College. Eliot made a bachelors degree prerequi-
site to entry into both the graduate school and the professional
schools. In effect, he placed a European-style university atop the
English-style college that Harvards founders created in 1636.
In addition to placing graduate schools atop the College, El-
iot broadened Harvards classical, lock-step curriculum by cre-
ating what he called the elective system, which allowed stu-
dents to choose from a wide range of courses that grew increas-
ingly numerous and specialized with time. Of the breadth of
Harvards disciplines, Eliot said, We would have them all, and
at their best. He was also a champion of faculty freedom, creat-
ing professional tenure and granting autonomy in curriculum
development, instruction, and research. He paid for the cost
of the expanding the course catalogue and research portfolio
largely through success in fundraising, having increased tuition
only once in his forty-year term. In the spirit of laissez faire,
though not without remonstration, Eliot also stood by as Har-
vards alumni built the nations largest football stadium at the
time (30,000 seats) and paid the teams new head coach almost
as much as Eliot made after four decades at Harvards helm.
Eliots successor in 1909, Lawrence Lowell, sought to order
and focus the intellectual free market that Eliot established; he
intended to restore the discipline of the old collegiate way of
living. Lowell introduced curricular concentrations (or ma-
jors) for undergraduate students, as well as the grading curve
and academic honors. Thanks to the philanthropy of a Standard
Oil heir, he was able to build Harvard houses in which students
lived and studied with tutors, as in the days of the early College.
The innovations of Eliot and Lowell made Harvard big-
ger, better, and more expensive. However, it was Lowells suc-
cessor in 1933, James Conant, who introduced the institu-
tional features that would make the university unrivaled in
its quality and cost. Before his selection as president, Conant
was a world-class research chemist. Concerned that Harvards
scholarly reputation had slipped during Lowells time and that
many of the tutors hired for the houses held unjustied expec-
tations of tenure, Conant raised the bar: tenure became tied
to scholarly productivity and was granted on an up-or-out
basis. From that time on, Harvard would hire and retain only
the best scholars, those with potential to be world-leading
in their elds.
As in scholarship, Conant also brought excellence, or what
became known as meritocracy, to student admissions. He
advocated standardized testing to ensure that the rare privi-
lege of a Harvard education was granted only to the intellectu-
ally most-deserving. New nancial aid packages allowed Har-
vard to be need-blind in admissions.
While Conant was personally playing a leading role in the
U.S. governments World War II efforts, facilitating among
other things the Manhattan Project, he positioned Harvard to
benet from the rise of government-funded research, another
dominant feature of the research universitys DNA. He also
oversaw the development of Harvards rst general education
curriculum, an innovative attempt to improve on Lowells dis-
tribution requirements.
The institutional traits established at Harvard were widely
copied, especially after the 1970 creation of the Carnegie Clas-
sication System, which placed the elite research universities
at the top of what came to be seen as a ladder to be climbed.
Signicantly, certain critical traits were not copied. One was the
1945 Ivy Group Agreement, which prohibited athletic scholar-
ships rst in football and later in all competitive sports. An-
other was Harvards house system, which ensured a supportive
collegiate living experience even as the university increased its
commitments to graduate programs and discovery research. A
third trait that didnt transfer was Harvard Colleges discipline
in limiting the number of courses required by its concentra-
tions, or majors; that curricular self-restraint by the faculty fa-
cilitates a four-year graduation rate of nearly 100 percent. The
51 FORUM FOR THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
consequence of the Harvard emulators failure to replicate these
elements of its DNA is that they pay more for intercollegiate
athletics, provide less support for undergraduate students, and
fail to graduate them as timely as Harvard does.
Even Harvard feels the weight of its expansive model.
Having integrated vertically with the addition of research to
teaching and of doctorate degrees to masters and bachelors
degrees, it continued to expand horizontally, adding subjects
of study and corresponding faculty departments, programs,
centers, and institutes. As each of these sub-units sought to
become bigger and better, the cumulative growth of the in-
stitution and its budget was exponential. Conants successor,
Nathan Pusey, who presided over Harvard from 1953 to 1971,
found the university all but impossible to manage and thus
focused on funding it.
Thanks to Puseys fundraising success, Harvard has sus-
tained its model. However, its prodigious fundraising capabil-
ity, which has produced a $27 billion endowment even after
the disastrous $11 billion loss of 2008, is the most difcult
trait of all to copy. Without nancial might akin to Harvards,
institutions that adopt its model struggle to attract the best
students and scholars and to achieve academic excellence in
so many subjects, degree programs, and research initiatives.
The Need for Online Innovation
The disruptive potential of online degree providers can be seen
in their divergence from the Harvard model, as shown in Fig-
ure 3. In addition to what they save by eschewing the research
activities, summer break, athletic teams, and campus infrastruc-
ture of the traditional university model, online degree provid-
ers enjoy signicant advantages in the delivery of instruction.
Online courses are developed centrally, allowing for a lower cost
of development and more systematic focus on cognitive learn-
ing outcomes. Through innovative learning systems, remedial
assistance can be provided online at reduced cost relative to face-
to-face tutoring. Online learning is both low cost and of increas-
ingly high quality. It is a classic disruptive innovation.
Fortunately, traditional universities have natural advan-
tages in delivering online learning. They have all of the as-
sets needed to compete effectively in the online environment.
In fact, the subject-matter expertise of their full-time faculty
members and their existing campus computer systems give
them a potential quality and cost advantage in delivering on-
line education. Whereas new online degree providers must
build their IT infrastructures from scratch and seek content
experts on the open market, universities can add online offer-
ings at low marginal cost, benetting from spare computer ca-
pacity and faculty members who can temporarily trade teach-
ing duties for course development.
The real advantage of the traditional universities, though,
is their ability to blend online and face-to-face learning expe-
riences. Hybrid instruction has proven more effective than ei-
ther of the pure modes (U.S. Department of Education, Ofce
of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and
Program Studies Service, and Ofce of Educational Technol-
ogy, Sept. 2010). Traditional universities can deliver the best
of bothlow-cost, convenient online learning blended with
periodic classroom-based instruction. Moreover, face-to-face
learning at the traditional university goes beyond the class-
room; it includes the important informal learning that comes
when students interact with one another in social activities
and with professors in research.
The combination of online technology and the campus ex-
perience has the potential to take innovative traditional uni-
versities to new levels, allowing them not only to respond to
disruptive competition but also to serve many more students
with their existing resources. The risk of disruption is real:
institutions that fail to employ online learning technology will
nd it difcult to grow, and the less-prestigious ones will lose
students as the cost disparity between the traditional model
and the technology-enabled model increases. However, inno-
vative institutions that marry the benets of the on-campus
experience and online learning are likely to nd growth op-
portunities beyond what they had imagined.
The Need for Focus
It wont be enough, though, to simply adopt online learn-
ing as a fundamental trait of the university. In addition, most
institutions need to be less Harvard-like in their aspirations.
Traditional University Trait Online University Copied?
Face-to-face instruction No
Long summer recess No
Shared faculty for undergraduate and
graduate programs No
Comprehensive specialization, departmentalization,
and faculty self-governance No
Private fundraising No
Competitive athletics No
Curricular distribution requirements and
concentrations (majors) Focused offerings
Academic honors No
Up-or-out tenure, with faculty rank and
salary distinctions No
Admissions selectivity No
Externally funded research No
Figure 3: Online University Divergence from the Traditional Model
52
FORUM FUTURES 2012
Online learning will allow for low-cost growth, but to com-
pete in the new higher education environment it is neces-
sary to revisit the assumption that the traditional univer-
sity can have, to paraphrase Eliot, everything at its best.
Many universities, for example, need to narrow the range of
students they attempt to serve. An institution may see replac-
ing undergraduate students with graduates as a protable
move both nancially and in terms of the Carnegie climb.
But graduate programs that are under-enrolled and lightly re-
garded hurt more than they help, on both counts. The cost of
hiring better-credentialed faculty and giving them more time
for research is hard to offset with increased graduate tuition
and research funding, particularly when the range of gradu-
ate studies is broad. Many institutions need to reassess their
commitment to graduate programs that compete for resources
with their undergraduate offerings.
Breadth of subject matter is another dimension of univer-
sity choice that requires focus. For-prot institutions derive a
signicant cost advantage over traditional universities by tar-
geting majors and graduate degrees that engender marketable
skills and are thus highly enrolled. Traditional universities have
a quality advantage in the breadth of their offerings, especially
when it comes to liberal education, something that every college
graduate should have. However, universities must be selective
in choosing which subjects to pursue in great depth. Course
catalogues and department rosters should reect the choice to
emphasize some elds more than others.
Scholarship is another crucial dimension of choice, though
in this case the focused university may actually broaden the
denition implicit in Harvards notion of the best. Traditional
discovery research is becoming more expensive, both because
of the growing cost of laboratories and eld studies and also
because of competition from a growing body of international
scholars pursuing the same prizes and publications. Largely
overlooked is the opportunity suggested by Ernest Boyer in
1990 and encouraged by the new Carnegie Community En-
gagement Classicationto take seriously the scholarship of
integration, application and, especially, instruction.
Challenging Conversations
In tackling these challenges of innovating and focusing, the
university community must put questions of people ahead of
questions of strategy. That may sound un-businesslike, but it
is in fact a key conclusion reached by business researcher Jim
Collins in the study that led to his best-selling book Good to
Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leapand Others Dont.
Likening a business organization to a bus, Collins says, Lead-
ers of companies that go from good to great start not with
where but with who. According to Collinss research, the
most successful businesses make sure that they have the right
people on the bus before they decide where the company is
going. These must be people who are both capable and com-
mitted to A-plus effort.
Traditional universities benet from having invested heavily
in getting the right people on the institutional bus. The tenure
process assures intellectual capacity and work ethic, and the
compensation level means that most professors have put the
love of discovery, memory and mentoring ahead of nancial
wealth. Though the organizational structures and systems of
the university may promote defensive and even self-serving be-
havior, the typical university has a team of remarkable capabil-
ity and commitment. Its potential for innovation is vast.
However, maintaining individual commitment while
changing fundamental aspects of the universitys DNA re-
quires an equally high level of commitment from the institu-
tion. With tenured positions in many elds at low ebb, faculty
members cannot be expected to vote themselves off the bus.
Innovation may require them to alter their activities, but no
meaningful discussion of change can be undertaken without
assurances that capable members of the community who com-
mit to innovating can remain with it. That principle guided
Charles Eliot, who implemented tenure at Harvard as he un-
dertook the innovations that established the great American
university. His innovations were premised on the guarantee
that the bus was big enough for its current riders. He believed
that was true because of the growing need for higher educa-
tion, the large number of people who could not then access
it, and innovations with the potential to make it more acces-
sibleall conditions that still hold today.
Successful conversations about tradeoffs also require new
measures of success. The traditional university not only prefers
bigger to smaller and more-focused, it also denes better in
terms that matter more to traditional scholars than to students
or employers. Faculty members in particular need the assurance
of supportive success measures before they take the risk of mov-
ing to a new seat on the institutional bus, such as by rerouting
their scholarly efforts into questions of instruction or applica-
tion. University presidents will need to worry less about the suc-
cess measures valued by the producers of rankings, foundations,
and elite bodies such as the Association of American Universities
(another one of Charles Eliots innovations).
Conclusion
Were cautiously optimistic about the future of traditional in-
stitutions of higher education. The caution stems from Clay-
tons research, which shows how difcult it is for established
organizations to respond to disruptive innovation of the kind
occurring now. If traditional universities and colleges can
53 FORUM FOR THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
change their DNA quickly enough to avoid serious disruption,
they will have deed a huge amount of experience and data.
Our optimism, on the other hand, ows from personal ex-
periences in higher education that cant be quantied but are
powerfully felt. Universitiesand especially university profes-
sorshave changed our lives for the better. If anyone can beat
the odds against being disrupted, it is our remarkably capable
and committed colleagues in higher education.
The online technology that threatens to disrupt the univer-
sity also vastly expands the universitys capacity. Eliots view of
technology, as expressed in his 1869 inaugural address, sug-
gests that he would have jumped at the opportunity to use it:
The revolutions accomplished in other elds have a les-
son for teachers In education, there is a great hungry
multitude to be fed. [I]t is for this American generation
to invent, or to accept from abroad, better tools than the
old; to devise or transplant prompter and more com-
prehensive means than the prevailing, and to command
more intelligent labor, in order to gather rapidly and sure-
ly the best fruit and have time for other harvests.
At his inauguration Eliot also prophesied, It will be genera-
tions before the best of American institutions of education get
growth enough to bear pruning. Some ve generations later, the
time for pruning has come. Even the strongest universities will
do well to re-focus their activities. Most university communi-
ties will need to go further, asking fundamental questions about
what they can do well and abandoning much of what they have
undertaken in a spirit of emulation. Those that continue to im-
perfectly imitate Harvards strategy will nd their costs increas-
ing and their market share shrinking, whether they accept the
metaphor of a higher education marketplace or not.
On the other hand, university communities that commit to
real innovation, to changing their DNA from the inside out,
may nd extraordinary rewards. The key is to understand and
build upon past achievements while being forward-looking.
Lawrence Lowell spoke of looking fty years into the future
as he led Harvard. The universities that survive todays disrup-
tive challenges will be those that recognize and honor their
strengths while innovating with optimism.
Leaders of universities will do well to remember what Eliot,
Lowell, and Conant knew. Harvards strength doesnt derive
merely from its world-leading reputation and endowment, or
even from its extraordinarily gifted faculty. It certainly isnt a
product of clinging to tradition. Harvards most persistent tra-
dition, according to Lowell, is the tradition of change.
Harvards greatest strength is its sense of unique iden-
tity and its gift for innovating in the service of that identity.
Eliot, Lowell, and Conant always had a vision of making
Harvard the worlds best university. But their most impor-
tant innovations, many of which have since become un-
questioned higher education traditions, were situation-
alinspired adaptations that Harvard needed at the time.
Conants up-or-out tenure, for example, addressed both the
goal of assembling the worlds best scholars and the pecu-
liar problem of the large cadre of relatively undistinguished
faculty members Lowell hired to staff his new houses just as
the Great Depression hit. His innovation allowed Harvard
to simultaneously raise the scholarship bar and right-size
the universitys workforce and operating budget. It was a
practical course correction not unlike Eliots creation of the
elective system, which addressed the excessively rigid mid-
nineteenth century classical curriculum. Lowell, in his turn,
created the innovative system of distribution and concentra-
tion, an enhancement to Eliots elective system.
Harvards great strength, which can be the strength of every
university, is a pattern of innovation that is continuous and
focused on the universitys unique missionwithout undue
concern for either tradition or what other institutions are do-
ing. Harvard steadily advances, heedless of any ladder or
the crowd of would-be competitors. Harvard pragmatically
climbs its own mountain. On a higher education landscape
that needs institutions of many types, that is the one Harvard
trait that all should emulate.
CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN is the Kim B. Clark Professor of
Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He is
author or co-author of eight books, including The Innovators Di-
lemma (1997), which received the Global Business Book Award
for the best business book published in 1997, and The Inno-
vators Solution (2003), both New York Times best sellers. His
most recent books include The Innovative University: Changing
the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out, with Henry
Eyring (2011); The Innovators Prescription: A Disruptive Solu-
tion for Health Care (2008); and Disrupting Class: How Disrup-
tive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns (2008).
In 2011, Christensen was named the most inuential business
thinker in the world. Christensen can be reached via www.clay-
tonchristensen.com.
HENRY J. EYRING is vice president for advancement at
Brigham Young University-Idaho. Prior to joining BYU-I in
2006, Eyring was president of the Japan Tokyo North Mission
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for four
years. Prior to that, Eyring was director of the MBA program
at Brigham Young University. He is co-author, with Clayton
Christensen, of The Innovative University: Changing the DNA
of Higher Education from the Inside Out (2011). Eyring can be
reached at [email protected].