Steve Jobs’ death recently from pancreatic cancer reminded me of a favorite quote of his that has always resonated with me. The quote is, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Focus groups are highly popular marketing tools. Many are done completely online now. But the whole point of innovation is somehow understanding what a consumer needs out in the future – not what they need now. Wayne Gretsky, the hockey great, had his own unique sports take on the concept of innovation in describing how he thought about the game of hockey and how he played. He always said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now.”
I was talking with a group of prospective MBA students last week when the question arose, “What, if anything, makes the UHD MBA program innovative?”
“Hybrid classes and 8 week terms,” I quickly responded and then saw a look of puzzlement on most students’ faces. It turned out that none of them had ever taken a “hybrid” class before or even knew what it was. The discussion that followed focused on the difficulty in balancing a career, a family, and the desire for more education. Traditional MBA programs create significant stress for students and their careers/families because of the “time element” involved in preparing for and attending 4-5 classes during a semester. Hybrid classes at UHD only meet one night per week from 7-8:50PM with the remainder of the classwork completed in an online format. The 8 week concept allows students to focus in-depth on just a couple of classes at a time rather than the larger block of 4 or 5. The group of students quickly understood the flexibility of this format in managing their careers and family lives.
Hybrid classes and 8 week terms are innovations for MBA programs – “career friendly for working professionals” – UHD’s equivalent to “skating to where the puck is going to be”. Funny thing, though, none of the faculty has started calling me Dean Gretsky....
Center gatherings are very prevalent advertising devices. Numerous are done totally online at this point. Be that as it may, the general purpose of development is some way or another understanding what a purchaser needs out later on not what they require now.
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