Technological Decisions by Storytelling: From National Knowledge Factories to a Global Learning Ecosystem The Present Everybody's U In this story, we start out with a wide range of institutions: from the public research universities most common in Europe to the community college systems that are common in the U.S. Today, we find the bulk of the world's at least 20,000 (+/-2,000; see Note 1) higher education institutions in this quadrant. They have all had to answer to the industrialization of education in a modern world that has a shortage of skilled workers. A majority is still relatively young, and there has been an exponential growth since the late 1950s. A lot of the recent development has been politically driven in order to develop geographical regions based on a need for both scale and proximity. This is the existing basis for competition when IT disrupts the balance through consumerized means of production like Web 2.0 and revolutionized means of distribution through the "death of distance" of the Internet. Figure 1. Gartner's Higher Education Business Model Scenarios 
Source: Gartner (September 2009)
The Future: All About U in 2019 — Extreme Characteristics It is at the end of the Everybody's U story that we have the greatest challenge for the future — affordable, right-quality higher education for the masses. The future extreme of Everybody's U in 2019 is a giga-institution that delivers basically more of the same but in a much larger scale and, by necessity, in new ways. There is great political pressure to keep the costs down, especially if the education is government-subsidized in any form. In order to achieve the educational goals cost-effectively, the institution adopts everything that leverages economies of scale without hurting the individual learner's possibilities to learn. In fact, the pedagogy/andragogy (see Note 2) will have to be considerably developed to cater to a greater number of learning styles in order to properly develop the talents of the students. This is a must when eventually more than 50% of the population will need to have higher education, and an elitist approach to learning simply does not meet these needs. Why Would You Work at an Everybody's U Institution? Here, it is about the greater good of the society, and consensus dictates the road ahead. You stay because you know you are helping to empower a lot of people to realize their social and economic potential.
Needed Technology: The Technology Strategy Map for Everybody's U 2019 To visualize the technology needs that enables a successful Everybody's U scenario, we use the Gartner Technology Strategy Map. In our version of this map, we emphasize the inherent need in higher education to balance organizational efficiency and personal productivity. Organizational efficiency focuses on cost-effective standardized processes to drive down the overhead (administrative) cost of an institution and maximize any return on investment from a collective point of view. Personal productivity focuses on individual researcher, teacher and student productivity to maximize the individual experience and satisfaction at the institution. Figure 2 is not an extensive mapping of technologies but rather a selection of technologies to demonstrate how the technology map can be used. Positioning of the "technologies" is as of September 2009. Figure 2. Balancing Organizational Efficiency and Personal Productivity in an Everybody's U Scenario 
Source: Gartner (September 2009)
The technology strategy map answers the CIO question, "What key investments in information technology will be most strategic in positioning the institution for long-term success in fulfilling its mission?" In this scenario, the technology strategy map is geared to everything that enhances cost-efficiency and scalability for both administration and education. Alternative delivery and acquisition models are key to success, and everything has to be considered. Open-source software, community source software, shared services, "anything as a service" (XaaS) and even business process outsourcing have to be considered if they lower the overall cost. New skills in managing these collaborative efforts and sourcing arrangements will have to be developed. Making the most of the number of faculty is crucial as student/teacher ratios keep getting higher. Leveraging consumer technology and students' experience with technology from previous education "layers" is important. Standardization is fundamental as Everybody's U has to be more integrated into a societal ecosystem of education that will have to be international in order to reach its fullest potential. Understanding not just learning styles but different cultural backgrounds of your students is an added layer of complexity. IT for Organizational Efficiency In the Everybody's U, ERP is fundamental to organizational efficiency, especially to minimize costs as well as secure auditability of public funds. Customer relationship management (CRM) is key for matching student potential to institutional pedagogical/andragogical capability. CRM is also needed to optimize retention and graduation by monitoring student progress in order to enable early discovery of potential problems that then can be addressed in time. New delivery models, primarily shared services, business process outsourcing and "cloud commodity" will be demanded by government to seek economies of scale and further lower costs. IT for Personal Productivity In the Only Us U, the IT differentiator for personal productivity is paradoxically that everything is standard and interchangeable. All IT supports standard identifiers, formats and protocols (IFaPs) that enable free movement between institutions within the educational ecosystem (compared with the Bologna Process; see Note 3). This enables the ultimate goal of "the right person at the right place, enabling every student to reach his or her fullest societal potential." The e-learning platform is central and also supports organizational efficiency by making course material exchangeable, but the true personal productivity comes from leveraging the next generation of public productivity tools. The next generation of e-learning platforms, "social learning platforms," which can be seen as a mashup of e-learning platforms, social software and possibly public productivity tools (compared with, for example, Google Apps), will play a great role in student experience and play a positive role in retention. A crucial capability is how simulation and visualization technology is harnessed to cater to different learning styles. In this context, public virtual worlds can play a significant role if they become standardized enough. Underpinning the Everybody's U are several standards-based infrastructural capabilities, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA), that allow reuse of Web services or the ability to share services efficiently between institutions. This is related to the need for an enterprise portal to ensure at least one distribution channel for institution services. However, the ability to deliver services to whatever platform or interface the students are using at the moment (compared with, for example, the open API of Facebook) means that the mastering of mashups is critical. The latter is also crucial for teachers' and students' ability to mash up all kind of resources in their teaching and learning environment. A really fundamental capability to keep this education ecosystem going is federated IAM, which is what ultimately enables the mobility and resource sharing needed to sustain the Everybody's U. A very helpful tool for identifying and populating an institutional technology strategy map is the Gartner Hype Cycles. In the case of Everybody's U, we recommend the following Hype Cycles:
- High-Performance Workplace
- Human Capital Management Software
- CRM Marketing Applications
- Open-Source Software
- Regulations and Related Standards
- XML Technologies
- Web and User Interaction Tech.
Why You Would Work at an Everybody's U Institution In this environment, IT services are mission-critical, and a trusted business-partner-type CIO, with excellent leadership and collaboration skills as well as understanding of the core processes and the IT services that enable them, is needed.
Where Are We Headed? Signposts, Likelihood and Competition An important part of scenario planning is to tell the middle part of the story. What "signposts," macroforces and technologies will increase or decrease the likelihood of a particular scenario? When looking at signposts for a scenario, we use the STEEP (Societal, Technological, Economical, Environmental and Political) categorization as methodology in general to ensure a broad view of macroforces. In an actual institutional strategic planning process, a useful method is to ask the stakeholders to write down "news headlines" of the future that would mark enablers or disruptors for the scenario under consideration, keeping STEEP in mind. Here, we use only the terms "enablers" and "disruptors" to present our assessments. Below we list a few examples. Enablers of this Business Model The fundamental driver for this business model scenario is the same as for All About U: a huge need for knowledge workers. But, the biggest enabler is political agreement to internationalize education in order to get the right person in the right place and secure economic growth. The key is: (1) to succeed in communities like the European Union (compare with the Bologna process); and (2) to extend this to include emerging and developing countries. Already, countries like Sweden have 40% international students at the master's level, and demographic trends suggest that workforce immigration is needed to sustain the economy. A key enabler is international agreement on several types of standards ranging from accreditation via metadata for learning opportunities to identity and access management. Disruptors of This Business Model The biggest disruptor of this scenario is much the same as for All About U and is focused on political protectionism. A combination of channeling funding (either directly or through subsidizing/financial aid restrictions) only to national education institutions with strict control of accreditation can effectively reduce the potential. Furthermore, increased sociocultural isolation trends combined with language barriers can create walled gardens that limit the potential economies of scale. As this is a hybrid e-learning and face-to-face learning model that still involves a fair amount of additional on-campus learning disruptors, include pandemics that will close all types of gathering places. On the technological side, failure to develop standards, especially on the IAM scene, will severely limit this business model's potential for success. Likelihood and Competition This scenario is the toughest one to be in due to the massive scale involved, but it is also the one that has to be tackled if the envisioned knowledge economy is going to succeed. It is also the most complex, as it requires great skills in technical strategy and involves a large amount of change management if the new technology enablers are to be successfully integrated. It is not going to be a fast mover; change is going to be facilitated by the retirement of a large number of baby boomer leaders and teachers and their replacement by "digital natives" in the next 10 years. The Everybody's U scenarios are basically government-driven or at least regulated colossi that will change, but at a pace that is slower than most people want. This will leave the field open for commercial options either in this traditional space or more in line with the All About U scenario. The All About U business model is the only one that can compete in scale, with Everybody's U potentially taking a large chunk of the bread-and-butter income-generating bachelor's courses. Subjects such as language, mathematics and culturally related social sciences are already ripe for the All About U business model. However, if Everybody's U institutions skillfully integrate the All About U offerings in their international educational ecosystem, they can prepare many people for courses with higher entry-level prerequisites and increase the base of eligible students for higher education. The Everybody's U is more of a just-in-case business model with a longer time horizon built on programs, while the All About U is more of a just-in-time business model built on discrete courses. They might well learn to coexist in a win-win fashion, enabling a quicker path to the end-goal of "the right person at the right place, enabling every student to reach his or her fullest societal potential." A great danger for Everybody's U is that the cousin, Only Us U, is often used as a model for strategic development, but it should not be. The Everybody's U is a different game and needs a different game plan.
In order for strategic planning through storytelling to be useful, it is important for a well-put-together team of stakeholders to go through the scenario-planning process. The journey is the goal. The methodology and the data presented here are by no means exhaustive, and should be used as input to an institutional process, not as a substitute for it.
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