The End in Mind » Deja Vu All Over Again – Blackboard Still Stuck in the Innovator’s Dilemma (Jon Mott's excellent and insightful observations about Blackboard and the status of LMS/CMS products is well worth reading. I've given a taste of his insight below, but I encourage you to read the entire blog post for it's depth and coherence.
Blackboard can still play a leading role in education. But it needs to think more about end-users and about non-consumers, not just about the universtity administrators who purchase and implement their products. That’s an admittedly tall order for a publicly-traded corporation to take on. But, as Christensen argues, they have to figure out a way to do so if they’re to remain relevant. That’s precisely the innovator’s dilemma.
My comments in response to Jon's excellent article:
Jon, I know your political science background will help you appreciate another relevant concept - the diffusion of innovation. So, not only do the folks at Bb have an innovator's dilemma, there is the whole question of from whence innovation arises and how is spreads. The s-curve of how innovation spreads might lead us to flip your model on it's head by suggesting that the innovators are faculty and students, the early adopters are colleagues and peers of the innovators. I would suggest that, in Bb's defense, their institutional position requires them to be at the opposite end of the innovation curve. In other words, they are likely to be "laggards" (not my word, but used in the innovation literature). Conclusion: we expect innovation from Bb but in reality that's not a role they can play.
