As a business manager at any level, it is your job to think about what might disrupt your business. Even if the potential disruption is a long way into the future, it may take a long time to prepare for it.
In one group, there was a comment about commercials being less successful because you will be able to skip them. In my opinion, if this happens, subscription prices will greatly increase and some sites that are now free will have subscription fees.
You identified a number of disruptive technologies. I have listed many of them in the table below along with my comments.
| New or Disruptive Technology | What is replaced? | My Comments |
| Video Streaming | Cable TV | Cable-TV forces you to pay for more content that you use. This has left room for Hulu and Netflix. More narrow services with even less content such as Major League Baseball (mlb.com) may threaten services like Hulu in the future. |
| Video Streaming | Video Rental Stores | Streaming is a technology rather than an improved business process |
| New storage methods | Floppy disks are replaced by CDs. CDs are replaced by DVDs, DVDs are partially replaced by USB drives, most local media can be replaced by cloud storage. | Old technologies are not replaced immediately when a new technology arrives. Many of us still have CDs and computers or other devices that can read them. Blacksmiths and Buggy makers are still working in counties inhabited by the Amish. |
| Client Portal and cloud storage for an Accounting Firm | Old procedures (mail paper), some data entry, and paper file storage | This is an example of the benefit of changed business processes to take advantage of technology. This might be considered disruptive because financial services firms that do not provide client portals will have difficulty staying in business. |
| Smart phones | Land line phones, cameras, mp3 players, cable television(?), and anything electronic we used to carry with us. | Businesses that do not realize that customers prefer to use mobile devices to interact with the business will have difficulty. |
| e-commerce | Brick and Mortar retailers. (Amazon left no room for Borders Books) | Surviving retailers will have e-commerce and a local presence (my opinion) |
| 3D Printing | Old methods of building prototypes and customer parts. It remains to be seen what will be replaced | Many local libraries have 3D printers and software that you can use. |
| World Wide Web (publishing) | e-books, blogs, news have partially replaced existing forms of publishing such as newspapers, magazines, and hard cover text books. | |
| Online Learning | Colleges and Universities that do not support Online Learning. My opinion is that this could change the job content for College Professors. Already I use some youtube videos instead of making my own. | I finished the third of three Data Science Courses from the University of California at Berkeley this summer instead of enrolling at Northwestern University due to cost and convenience. |
| Uber, Lyft and the sharing economy | Speculation on my part: Hotels (airbnb), Rental Cars (uber), New Car Dealers (cars will be shared), some public transportation. | Is the big change here technology or a new business process that so far has been able to circumvent taxi cab regulations? Opinion: When venture capitalists stop subsidizing Uber and Lyft, prices will go up significantly. |
| Self Service Ordering (McDonalds, Panera) | Either employment will be reduced or same store volume could increase or both | This is more of a business process change that a disruptive technology. However, it may somewhat change the way we live when connected with mobile ordering. |
The consensus was that Dominican did good job in implementing the Technology Plan.
Many of you thought that online courses should be much more interactive including the use of live sessions with Zoom or some other tool. I plan to experiment with this in the Spring. My dilemma is that students sign up for online courses so they can do the work on their schedule so requiring a Zoom meeting at a specific time might be a problem for some students.
You also felt that there should be capabilities to network with your online classmates. Zoom and other commercial tools could provide the technical capability. This, however is more than a technical issue. I did most of my graduate work online while I was working close to full time and would not have wanted to spend time networking with fellow students. I was glad to help fellow students with homework issues but was no looking for social connections. On the other hand, I was a unique (very old) student.
Two other common recommendations for the next long term plan were recording all lectures and expanding the library's research databases. I like these ideas. Fellow BSB professors would like to have access to more financial datasets and I can see the advantages of recorded lectures. I can see this because I do not have to make the funding priority decisions.
Finally, several of you suggested that Dominican implement all-online degree programs and then market nationwide. I personally think that our current strength is being able to provide personal support to people who can come to campus at least occasionally. If we could succeed in the online-only market that would be great. Right now, I don't see why a student in Oklahoma City would pick courses from Dominican rather than the University of Oklahoma. You should ignore my opinion on this. Marketing is not my area of expertise.