Original subtitles

Welcome back, everybody. I'm Darrell Gunter,

your host for this session on,

We are in for a real treat today, ladies and gentlemen,

because we have Dr. Jerry Wind,

who's going to talk about A Future Without Discipline Silos.

But before we bring on Dr. Wind, Allow me to introduce,

our esteemed speaker,

Dr. Jerry Wind, joined Wharton in 1967, with a doctorate from Stanford,

and since 2017. He is the Lauder Professor Emeritus,

and Professor of Marketing.

He founded the Wharton "think tank", the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management

and directed it for three decades.

Among his many innovations at Wharton. He led the development

of the Wharton Executive MBA,

the Lauder Institute, the new MBA of 1990, and the Wharton School Publishing.

He has edited top marketing journals, published over 300 articles,

manuscripts and chapters, and authored and co-authored or edited 30 books,

and received the four major marketing awards,

Buck Weaver, Parlin, Converse,

and AMA/Irwin Distinguished Educator award.

He was inducted into the inaugural group of AMA fellows.

He was also one of the original legends in the marketing,

with an eight volume anthology published by Sage in 2014.

He has consulted with over 100 companies

and testifies in intellectual property cases.

He is a member of the executive committee of SEI,

sits on the advisory boards of various trustees

of the Philadelphia Museum of Art,

the Curtis Institute of music and grounds for sculpture.

He is a co founder of the Reichman University,

the first private nonprofit University in Israel,

formerly known as The Interdisciplinary Center,

Herzliya and a recipient of the honorary doctorate.

His current research explores marketing driven business strategy,

creativity, and innovation and challenging our mental models.

His recent books include Transformation in Times of Crisis,

It was published in December 2020.

Can Art Resolve Conflict published in 2018,

Beyond Advertising: Creating Value Through All Customer Touch points 2016,

and The Network of Imperative:

How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models

that was published in 2016.

He has a 2017 inducted into a Hall of Fame,

marketing Hall of Fame,

the co founder of The Purple Project For Democracy

and the Re imagine Education Global Competition and Conference.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Dr. Jerry.

Thank you Darrell.

It's a delight to be with you.

And let me share with you my view of A Future Without Disciplinary Silos.

My premise is the academic world is structured around disciplines.

Yet, most of the key challenges facing societies,

organizations, individuals, cannot be solved by a single discipline.

The future of academia, if we strive for impact,

should be by bridging disciplinary silos.

The objective therefore of our session is to inspire us to challenge

the traditional disciplinary focus of academia

and explore new mental models leading

to more effective interdisciplinary perspective

that balances effective bridging of disciplines,

while gaining the benefit of in-depth disciplinary expertise.

Not a trivial challenge,

especially given our history of total focus

and reliant on individual disciplines.

The approach of our short session focuses

on four things briefly with identify,

some of the key challenges facing society, businesses, organizations and individuals

will assess whether any of these challenges can be solved

with a single discipline.

And I'll give you a spoiler alert and a challenge.

My view is that the answer to this is no.

That no single discipline can solve any of the major challenges we face,

either society, businesses or individuals.

But the challenge for you guys

is to try to think can a single discipline solve

any of these problems.

The third part of our brief discussion going

to explore the viability of eight principles

that could change the current disciplinary focus

and I would end with an act, call for experimentation

and encourage you to submit the results of your experiment

to the Wharton/ QS Reimagine Education Global Competition

that Darrell mentioned when he introduced me.

Let's start. Let me briefly review

some of the key challenges facing society, business, organizations, individuals,

you're probably familiar with all of them,

but let's just do a very quick review.

When you think about the challenges facing society,

just look at the World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report,

for example, climate action failure, infectious disease, livelihoods crisis,

social cohesion erosion, biodiversity loss, debt crisis and so on.

Or look at the very well publicized United Nations' Sustainability Goals,

no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well being, quality education,

gender equality, and so on and so on.

Or think about any others that are not captured by these two.

And now let's think about the illustrative business

and organizational challenges.

The first one will be challenging the mental models to recognise

that going back to work, as it existed before the pandemic is not a viable model.

We need new new mental business and revenue models for the new reality

that we're facing now.

To think about as part of this new reality,

how do we shift from a shareholder orientation

to a stakeholder orientation.

You know, a major, major move that's happening as we speak.

Third, how do we assure the primacy of the customer,

the customers are changing they're empowered, they're skeptical.

And we have to change to a "win-win" co-creation model

in our relationship with our customers,

and other stakeholders.

Or how do we speed up the needed digital transformation?

Or how do we adapt to the huge advances in science and technology?

Or how do we achieve sustainable profitable growth

in an increasingly turbulent environment,

and so many other challenges facing all organizations and businesses today.

Or think about the challenges facing us as individuals?

How do we cope with the new reality of the post pandemic era?

And the turbulent changes in society, including the ideological divisions,

especially in the US?

How do we survive and climb up the Ma slow Hierarchy

of Needs towards happiness?

While we have to struggle, even with the very basic foundation

of the lower parts of the hierarchy?

How do we achieve the desired work-life balance?

How do we adapt to the huge advances in science and technology?

How do we shift to the new identity of the person

and his or her always on AI empowered smartphone or smart glasses or implants?

Just think about the reality that today, you cannot see a person isolated

from their smartphone?

So how do we change the unit of analysis? And think about the students

in our classroom with each one of them empowered with a smartphone

that is AI empowered,

and basically have more current accurate information on any topic,

then probably the faculty?

So these are illustrative challenges.

And the question for us, which is the part two of our discussion

is Can any of these challenges be addressed by a single discipline?

As I made, mentioned in my kind of spoiler alert,

I believe that it's impossible, saying for example,

from a society point of view, how do we address

the increasing gap between the have and have nots

or their associate challenges of poverty, homelessness,

employ ability, salary, gender gap, and so many other challenges.

Can any of the disciplines we are familiar with will solve the problem?

Economics, business, psychology, sociology, mental health, education,

architecture, city planning, or any others?

My answer to this is probably not, you need a combination of all of these,

or most of these to try to solve these types of challenges.

Well, let's think about business.

You know, how do we achieve sustainable profitable growth,

while at the same time we achieve and address

the objective of all the stakeholders.

You know which of the following business disciplines can solve it?

R and D and Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Technology, Human Resources,

Operations, Customer Service, Accounting, and so on.

Obviously, no single discipline can solve these types of challenges.

Or let's take an example for discipline. Let's think about marketing.

You know, marketing is supposed to deliver

the desired real time personalized customer experience.

That's what customers want today, real time personalized customer experience,

can marketing delivered by itself

without the product and service designed

without digital transformation infrastructure,

and readiness, without manufacturing,

without human resources, without customer research, or customer service,

no way, marketing cannot do it.

Marketing has to become the integrator of all these disciplines to try to deliver

the real time personalized customer experience.

And this is reflected actually,

by the titles of the chief marketing officer.

Increasingly you see two patterns.

One is adding to the title of marketing other functions.

Like the examples on the upper side of the chart,

when you have EVP Chief Marketing, Digital Strategy target,

for example, SVP Digital Sales and CMO IBM, or Chief Marketing,

Digital and customer experience officer at McDonald's

or Chief Marketing and Communication Officer at MasterCard,

or CMO and Head of Global Analytics Facebook,

or signal at an even more dramatic shift,

shift away from the title of marketing at all.

And an increasing number of companies that have a Chief Customer Experience,

or Chief Growth Officer, or Chief Brand Officer,

or Chief Revenue Officer, or Chief Customer Officer.

All of these, don't even have the name title marketing in the title.

In marketing it exists report to these new functions,

obviously is a clear shift in direction that we have to start changing

the traditional narrow view of marketing

as in charge of the four P which there never are,

because it rarely is the case

that someone in marketing is in charge of all four P's,

the Product, Price, Promotion and Place.

Rather, marketing has turned into a really narrow area focusing on the brand,

and some aspects of the promotion, the advertising.

But the reality is if we want to have an effective discipline of marketing,

we have to change its focus to focus on and center on

the integration of all the different functions

that are required to deliver what the customer wants,

which is real time personalized customer experience.

So with all these, let's focus on what can we do about it.

So in this part, I would like to propose eight principles

that effectively could bridge the disciplinary silos,

while ensuring at the same time the benefits of disciplinary depth.

So the first principle I would like to suggest is to break

the tyranny of A versus B model and adopt an A plus B model,

for example, it's not digital versus physical.

It is not online learning versus back to the classroom.

Rather, what we have to do is we have to focus on

this seamless omnichannel experience.

How do we create the new education of the future

that balances both digital and physical?

The second principle is to recognise that the solution to most problems

come from disciplines outside the one that owns the problem.

This was a breakthrough study by innocentive few years ago,

that examines the question, how come that open talent,

open innovation out there can solve

so many problems that major companies R and D operation

where their 1000s of people cannot solve it internally.

And they're finding was actually quite surprising at a time.

It shows that the further the discipline of the problem

solver from the discipline of the problem,

the higher the likelihood of success, which means if there is a medical problem,

it is not the medical experts who are likely to solve the problem,

but rather people from other fields.

And recently there was a kind of a challenge by one of

the major pharmaceutical companies.

And the winners, for example, were three computer scientists from MIT.

So let's realise the fact that there is an increasing body of evidence

that shows that the solution to most problems

come not from the discipline that owns the problem,

but rather from other disciplines.

The third principle is to challenge

the old employment model that even for a faculty

an adaptive strategy that balances employees and open talent,

there is enormous increase in the supply of global open talent around the world.

Let's utilize it. Let's rethink,

that our talent pool should not be only people we hire,

but rather a balance between the people

we hire and employ and an open talent

that we try to reach to and access around the world.

Four, let's recognise that universities do not have a monopoly on

the creation of knowledge and that in an increasing number of areas

it is corporate labs, and innovative startups that are the true innovators.

This has huge implications to rethink

the whole notion of university industry collaboration,

and how do we create those effective win win collaboration between universities?

And not only in faculty research, but also think about

this in terms of how do you engage them in the classroom?

How do you engage the students at all levels,

undergraduate masters or doctorate?

How do you engage them in research and effective learning

with the labs and other industry innovators?

The fifth principle is to capitalize on the adoption of zoom,

and other advanced platforms that simplify

and enhance interdisciplinary global collaboration.

Never been easier than today to try to collaborate with people around the world,

using zoom or other technologies, you know, in a sense,

we break away from the tyranny of physical spaces,

and the demand that traditional travel time requires,

we can do it now instantaneously,

and create networks of partners around the world

from many disciplines and many countries

who can work with us on any research or educational project.

Six, let's leverage the advances in science

and technology and initiate experiments,

exploring the value both in education, and academic research.

Just think about the implications of AI, or the impact of cloud and mobile,

or the advances in augmented reality, virtual reality or mixed reality,

and how this can change the nature of learning and student experience.

Consider the new Google Lens

which combines words and images and their amazing implication,

consider automatic translators,

they bridge they kind of the traditional language barriers

or consider insights from neuroscience

that provide enormous insights into how people learn.

And Let's think about the seventh principle,

which is how do we capitalize on the capabilities with digital natives?

How do we enhance the humans with smart AI assistance?

We talked about this before,

but imagine that in your classroom, every student has a smartphone that with an AI,

empowered powered brain.

And they, the faculty has to address now not the student by himself

with a closed book and other information.

But this amazing AI assistance that can help

the students in everything that the students need.

What happened to the traditional focus on memory,

or the traditional way of running a classroom.

Just think about this simple scenario,

how this human machine interaction the changes, the unit of analysis

can change everything that we have known

and expand the benefit of the current societal pressure to

further increase diversity,

to include diversity of perspective and thought.

The eighth principle is to leverage the lessons

from the successful transition to online education,

and the willingness to challenge the status quo by

experimenting with truly innovative educational models for research and learning.

We cannot ignore the fact that most universities

were successful over the last 18 months in

the transition from the traditional classroom, to online education.

We cannot just go back to the old classroom

and forget what we learned.

We have to think about a new way of creating our educational offering

by integrating online with some physical presence.

And as an example here, let me share with you 10 guidelines,

which I proposed recently, in a paper,

focusing on the Re-imagining Executive Education.

But I believe that these 10 principles apply not only

to executive education, but for all education.

And briefly, expand the target audience don't just limit to

what we're doing to the traditional college age students.

Design for lifelong, lifelong learning, lifelong learning is a must for everyone.

You know, if we are concerned about lifelong employability,

we have to think about lifelong learning.

And it's not only starting after college,

it has implication to what we do in college

in the undergraduate, master's and doctoral level education.

Challenge the unit of learning that what we just discussed about a minute ago

think about the student and their smartphone or smart glasses

or even implanted AI chips.

For imagine, re imagine the objectives of our education and most importantly,

the content to reflect the changing world.

Five, employ innovative pedagogical approaches

don't just stick with what we have done historically.

Six, Don't take the schedule for granted.

You know, most university courses are

Monday, Wednesday for 80 minutes under the light,

but knowledge was not given to the world

in increments of twice a week.

Different classes, different topics, require different types of schedules.

Be flexible, experiment with the schedule,

design the schedule to enhance the learning

not to be at the convenience of the administrators.

Seven, create and orchestrate the community of learners.

The best learning is not by the model,

the old model of a single faculty interact with the music class of students,

the learning comes among the students as well.

How do we create a community of learners that is not

only restricted to the people are in the classroom?

How do we engage alumni, How do we engage the business community in this,

how do we engage others called open talent as part of our communities.

Eight leverage the technology we have.

Nine design the needed integration with the future of work initiatives

and offering of innovative agile and diverse programmes and experiences

and 10 develop new business and revenue models which are essential

if we are to survive and have the access that education should have.

So with guests and a my apology for the speed

in which we're covering this, but the topic is important,

bridging this disciplinary silos is a must if we are to have

impact as educators as universities.

So what we briefly covered was the identity,

the identifying key challenges we face,

society, business organization, individuals,

we assess to what extent the challenges can be solved

with a single discipline, at least my conclusion is they cannot.

And therefore the solution is we have to

bridge the disciplinary silos while benefiting from

the traditional depths of a disciplinary education.

And therefore, We want to explore how to do it.

And I proposed eight principles to do it,

including the last 10 examples of what should

you do in terms of reimagining education?

And now the most important final step is, what do we do about it? How do we act?

And what I would like to encourage you is to experiment, experiment, experiment,

pick any of the ideas we discussed, or you hear from the other sessions,

and design experiments around them,

there is no better way of knowing

what works or not is then experimenting with them.

It's the only way in which you can actually establish

causality between what you do and the results you get.

And look at the right side, I'm listing some of the companies

which are defining the champions of experimentation.

Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba,

other leading high-tech companies

have 1000s of experiments going all the time,

they don't make any decisions.

Unless it's based on a series of experiments,

we're talking about really moving way,

way beyond just the A B testing, to more sophisticated experimentation.

So if we want to

try to make education relevant,

we have to start designing experiments

to try to test the value of the various ideas

and hypotheses we have.

So finally, if you run the experiment, which I hope you will do,

inspired by this, and many of the other sessions in this programme,

and if the experiment is innovative,

was proven results and potentially scalable,

submit it to the Wharton/QS Re-imagine

the Global Education competition.

And you can win first prize is $50,000,

or $50,000 in Amazon Web Service credits,

and many, many other prizes for many different domains of education.

So go to the website of re-imagining education.

Explore the conditions in turn for competition

you missed already this year.

The last day was October 3,

but you can definitely attend our conference in December.

That will give you ideas for other

innovative experiments in the education area, but thinking about

implementing designing and implement experiments now

and submitting it to the 2022 competition.

I hope this session was helpful.

If you are interested in any follow up on any of the ideas here,

feel free to communicate with me directly to my email id.

Thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference.

On behalf of the inaugural

Dr. Jerry Wind for that phenomenal presentation.

Please be sure to come back for the next session of

Also, if you have questions for

Dr. Jerry Wind, please be sure to post your questions

in the Q and A box and note that

the responses will be published in the official conference report.

Also be sure to visit our sponsors and exhibitors at their booths.

And, again, I'm Darrell Gunter, your host for this session

and Dr. Jerry Wind we want to thank you again for that outstanding presentation.

Have a great day.