Okay let us say, you as an individual are a well
established company or a well established brand. Everything you are involved in
is like a business transaction. This includes your personal life, family, work
life and most importantly your education. Because you need immediate profit you
cannot waste time on unnecessary transactions or unnecessary meetings. This
includes the education you have received:-
So what can Educational Institutes Learn from Business?
a) A business must add value or solve a
problem - When you stop adding value, your company dies. But in education we
are allowed to consume content for years without bringing any actual value. We
are dependent for the first twenty years of our lives and do not bring actual
value to the lives of people around us up to then. Also the most successful
companies are the ones that solve a simple problem. For instance, Facebook
helped get the world more connected through an online social platform.
b)
Businesses will always work on things
that are currently relevant – You will
not see a business working on an outdated idea or project. Most enterprises
have to adopt new trends in their industry. If they fail to do so, their
competition will and this will effect their customer base.
c)
Business will always adopt latest
technology – This includes new inventions in other fields apart from technology
that will bring actual value to the company. The television was invented in the
1940’s, but it came into classrooms only in 1980’s. But if the technology was
relevant to a company, it would be adopted immediately. For instance lots of
companies have taken up digital marketing strategies between 2010 – 2013
because that is the need of the hour. They cannot afford to adopt it twenty
years from now.
d)
Every business functions at the very
edge of thinking of their particular industry -
Every company in the world functions with this principle, ‘How do you
take your industry to the next level’. You will never see a food manufacturing
company that does exactly the same thing that another food manufacturing company
does. There will be some difference or the other, even if they offer the same product or service. And a food manufacturing company is forced to work at the
very edge of thinking in the food manufacturing industry. It will not repeat
the mistakes of food manufacturing companies in the past. The entrepreneur or
business person will study the food manufacturing industry in detail. Then they
ensure that whatever they start off, to an extent is a creation brought to life
after a complete study of the sum of knowledge ever created by all
entrepreneurs, companies, related industries of the food manufacturing
industry. In most educational institutions, this approach to learning is not
encouraged, because it is not immediately necessary. You are expected only to study
how much is require in the curriculum and nothing more. But if you looked at
your life as a company, it is absolutely necessary you study as much as
possible about your industry, otherwise you will not survive.
e)
Businesses have to Differentiate themselves
– The next time you are at a shopping mall, observe all the retail and
wholesale stores around you. You will notice that no store looks alike. Even if
they are both garment stores, there is a clear differentiation in branding,
marketing and general feel of the brand.
f)
Business Companies have to build and
sustain their own culture – A business spend several years building their work
culture. Zappos for instance is an American online shoe retailer that is know
as one of the best places to work. Employees are mostly selected based on
whether they will fit in with the company culture or not. They are regarded to
have one of the best customer service offerings of any company.
g) Scalable Quality - If you observe some of the technology businesses that have been accepted world over. They create a good core product. Then find a way to make this strong core product available to the masses. But they ensure that the basic core product retains its quality. This happens because the team working on this core product has the expertise and passion to ensure the quality of this core product. They are incentivized to do it. We can compare this strong core team and core product to a group of passionate teachers working in classrooms.
Business has found a way to incentivize innovation and progress. There is something to learn from this efficiency in functioning, strong core team, and the idea of scalable quality.
Let us Learn Together
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