Wayne Gretzky famously said he never skated to where the puck was, but always to where it was going to be.Skate to where the puck will be
This adage has been part of the design philosophy for start-ups for years and increasingly it is being incorporated into the design philosophy of product development of major corporations. Even as product design and life cycles continue to shorten the inexorable march of Moore’s law makes it imperative to plan your response to a world as it will look in one or two years time. Not to the world we see today.

If companies can do this why is the present educational system incapable of doing same?
One reason is of cause the risk of being wrong. If you dig deeper into this aspect I think you will find that the argument is fallacious. It hinges on the assumption that there is a close coupling between what is being taught and what will eventually be needed by the graduates later. This connection is so far off base it is almost risible.

I am not going to expand on this here but since the people reading this are very likely to be graduates themselves, just cast your mind back and compare what concrete knowledge you had at graduation versus what you eventually got to use. (Problem solving methodologies are excluded)

Second the ones that are carrying the real risk is not the ones that is being protected by this attitude. The students are the concrete risk holders but the schools “reputation” is the real reason for the conservatism displayed.

I am an MBA graduate student at ESC Lille and one thing I do know is that any job I get will entail collaboration across geography and time. So how does my school address the need for advanced collaboration learning? By assigning team work with 2-3 of fellow class mates, to be done within a few days and with the lecture schedule adjusted accordingly. Duh!


This is not where the puck is going to be, this is hardly where the puck is now.


Learning to collaborate in a flat world requires participating in heterogeneous groups with members located in different locations. ESC Lille has a satellite campus in Paris and one would have thought that it would be a natural thing to at least have teams constituted of member in both locations, but alas.There is a myriad of collaboration tools available for free or at nominal cost. Web 2.0 suites, VOIP enhanced Whiteboard and Presentation packages. etc. A starting point for the coming graduates should be to learn how to use those rather than the stale office solutions of yore.

How hard can it be for the various teaching institutions to have students from different location work together on some assignments. They do have exchange programs so why not take it a step further?

Maybe no one has asked them yet or more likely Hockey is not the favorite sports activity on campus.