Gen Z and Disruptive Innovation

I won’t soon forget the looks on the faces of some of North Carolina’s most distinguished leaders as more than 50 high school Gen Z Ambassadors flash-mobbed the audience at the 27^th annual Emerging Issues Forum in Raleigh earlier this week.  For two days over 1000 people assembled to talk with, not at, youth from across the state about our collective future.  The results were provoking, at times sobering, inspiring and incredibly hopeful.  And the necessities of innovative thinking, communicating, engaging and acting were woven throughout the conversations. 

From there I went on to AshokaU’s “Disrupting Higher Education” hosted by Arizona State University and its innovative leader Michael Crow.  Nearly 500 students and educators came together to discuss the future of Higher Ed.  In his pioneering work on disruptive innovation, Harvard’s Clay Christensen frames the challenge this way: How can we take something very complex, expensive and available to a few and make it simple, affordable and available to many?  AshokaU expanded on that framing of disruptive innovation with a global to local approach: to effect the change we want to see in the world, what do we, as universities, need to offer and how do we, as individuals, prepare?  It was thrilling to be part of such energetic and change-provoking dialogues, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to share my thoughts on the role of leadership in this important work.  As a recent Reuters article demonstrates, Carolina is fortunate to have our own pioneering thinker on being an innovative campus in Chancellor Holden Thorp. 

What I heard from young people in Raleigh and Arizona reinforced my sense that traditional walls separating social and commercial entrepreneurship, nonprofit and for-profit enterprise, and curricular and experiential learning continue to crumble.  And that the behaviors associated with entrepreneurship, invention, and innovation (at times disruptive) are becoming an ever-more critical part of the tools we all need to thrive in a global world. 

At UNC, we are steadily working to punch holes in silos, foster interdisciplinary collaboration and exploration, and ramp up the teaching of entrepreneurship to students across campus.  Budding social entrepreneurs have a new home, financial and capacity-building support at the Campus Y, and plans are in place to have wet lab space available on campus later this spring to UNC scientists who are starting companies based on their research.  We are developing ways to make UNC research more accessible to the public through an exploding smart-phone and tablet market, and our entrepreneurs-in-residence are expanding student engagement and practice.

Steadily and with thoughtful leadership, UNC continues to bring disruptive innovations to our approach, and produce innovations that are changing the world as a result.