TITLE: Mission Statements and Implementation Details
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 04, 2011  5:39 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Last week, I thought out loud about the
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2011-04.html#e2011-04-26T16_41_14.htm">
   university's relationship with its students</A>,
which may be different from what some are thinking
it is.  I just ran across an interview with Tim
O'Reilly from last week about the
<A HREF="http://blogs.forbes.com/jonbruner/2011/03/25/tim-oreilly-on-piracy-tinkering-and-the-future-of-the-book/">
   future of his industry</A>.
His industry is different from what some are thinking
it is, too:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
At O'Reilly the way we think about our business is
that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference
producer; we're a company that helps change the
world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

My university could do worse than simply stealing
O'Reilly's mission statement.  There is more to
our mission, of course.  Research universities, at
least, have historically also been about creating
knowledge; universities such as mine have been as
much about integrating knowledge as creating it.
Public universities also serve their states in
various ways, not the least of which is preparing
educated citizens for participation in public life.
It's hard to serve all these roles, and ultimately
it all comes down to students and learning.

Mission statements and strategic plans have a bad
reputation among faculty, and for good reason.
They to be corporate statements diluted, by trying
to say everything and, as a result, saying nothing
much.  But thinking hard about the real core of
the university's mission might help us evolve and
survive, rather than becoming the
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-06.html#e2009-06-11T20_24_02.htm">
   next dinosaur</A>.

Our mission certainly isn't about classrooms, packaged
courses, and labs filled with general purpose computers.
Those are implementation details, built from the
technology of a particular era.  Just as the book and
newspaper are undergoing changes in their basic form
as technology evolves, so too should the university
experience.  Some of the technology we use now belongs
to a dying era.

That's what makes the O'Reilly's statement I quote
above so important.  He has always recognized that
his business is not defined by the technology of the
time.  Some people are afraid of changing technology
because they do see themselves and their businesses
as defined by their implementations.  As technology
evolves, O'Reilly is comfortable evolving his business
model along with it, without abandoning what the
company is really about.
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