Rethinking Work & Learning: How Disruptive Innovation is Changing Everything | Scott Anthony

In this episode of The SkillsWave Podcast, Kathleen Carr sits down with renowned strategy professor and author Scott Anthony to explore the seismic shifts reshaping education and the workforce. They dive into the parallels between disruption in media and learning, discuss the rise of AI-driven content creation, and question the traditional degree model in a world demanding continuous upskilling. Scott shares insights on how curiosity, adaptability, and lifelong learning can future-proof careers. Tune in to uncover what’s next in the evolving landscape of work and education!

Chapters

• 1:12 Impact of disruption and innovation on education
• 5:39 Lifelong education subscription and ecosystem
• 10:01 Future proofing with curiosity, wonder and openness

Transcript

Intro:

Welcome to The SkillsWave Podcast, where we explore the challenges and innovations in corporate learning.

 SkillsWave is redefining workforce transformation with its free AI powered upskilling and education benefits platform.

 Kathleen: 

Hi, I'm Kathleen Carr, senior director of partnerships and product strategy at SkillsWave. I'm joined by Scott Anthony. Scott is a clinical professor of strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he focuses on the adaptive challenges of disruptive change. Scott's next book, also his ninth book, is Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations that Shaped our Modern World. It will be released in September by my friends at the Harvard Business Review Press, where Scott and I first met nearly two decades ago. Today we're going to talk about disruption, teaching and the future of work. Scott, welcome, we're so happy to have you on The SkillsWave Podcast. 

Scott: 

Kathleen, it is my pleasure to be here—two decades, it feels like an instant, but yeah, that's how long it's been. 

Kathleen: 

Okay. We'll jump right in, Scott. First question how do you see disruption and innovation impacting education?

Scott:

 Nice easy question to get into the discussion. You know, thinking about this question, I think about a friend, Doug Shapiro, who used to be the head of strategy for Turner Broadcasting, big collection of TV stations and what not. And he's done a lot of thinking about disruption in media. And I think his thinking ports very nicely to what's going on in education. He says, in essence, we're at the beginning of wave two of disruption in media. Wave one was about distribution. So, you know, in the world of media, you have things like Netflix, which allow you to consume content in new ways.

In education, you have the ability to do things remotely, to digitize content in new ways. You see some new things emerging, like LinkedIn Learning and so on. But it's pretty much the same basic approach we've seen for long periods of time. Wave two in media is you then have the disruption of the creation of content. And obviously generative AI is the big thing that's going on there. You see the exact same thing in education. We're in a moment now where there's going to be a time where we say, “remember before and look how it is after.” And we're in the middle of that and the middle of any of these things is really messy. And it's a really messy time right now because you have, in my view, a very fundamental disruption taking place and how exactly it will shake out I think is really anybody's guess. It's a scary time or an exciting time, depending on how you want to look at it. I, of course, you know me, I view it as an exciting time, but I know not everybody shares that viewpoint. 

Kathleen: 

Yeah, I agree, Scott. It's hard to see sometimes the lessons learned from other industries when you're in that, as you just said, the messy middle.

But I think media as always, right, so interesting to look at from a variety of perspectives. But I agree with you, equating what has happened there with education is a really interesting model, right, because this is still, consumers consuming content, whether that's in book, audio, video, right, via teaching methods. So I think media is a really interesting comparison for education.

Scott: 

And if you play with it, you say, okay, well what has happened in media? 

Well, number one, there has been an absolute explosion in what is available. So many more people are able to consume many more things in many more convenient settings, which for us as consumers is a really great thing. 

 Number two, you've had a democratization of who is producing content. So you now have the ability through TikTok and other means to have really anybody be a producer. 

We had this kind of weird moment in our family last year, where our son kind of overnight turned into a social media star very accidentally. He was working on a student project as he was in his senior year at school, and it just went viral. They were posting videos about it and the boys with the boss got 2 million followers. And there he was on Good Morning America. I was just like, whoa, where did this come from? And you know, our son's got his feet on the ground, so it didn't affect him too much. But, you know, this idea that anyone can be someone who could have a moment like that is a really profound change.

And then you think, you know, disruptive theory and its application really well. As you go through this, the definition of what is quality really changes and what is high quality through the eyes of the ultimate consumer. It looks really, really different. And that's something that I think in education we're just beginning to think about. And you know, you look at the age of the industry, I was talking to a colleague at Tuck, said you know, “we really have been doing things pretty much the same way, not for a year, decade or century, but really for a millennia.” For a thousand years, we've been following a particular model. So you know that that's a lot of unlearning that has to happen to really do new things. 

Kathleen:

Yeah. And Scott, that's exactly where my mind went in terms of the quality aspect. The democratization of learning you know, as you well know, just affords ample opportunity to consume. But how do you know if what you're consuming is of quality? And traditionally there's brand behind that, right? That matters. There's the understanding we all have of what it means to get a degree and the rigor behind some of that. But how do you afford quality to the type of learning that comes from upskilling and really thinking about the future of work, where perhaps, a degree is necessary to be consumed in parts or in a different way entirely to ensure that your workforce is upskilled. And so just thinking about that, how do you think about continued education in this required world of upskilling and speed and all the different technology advances in AI and elsewhere? 

Scott:

I reflect on a couple moments to answer that question. One. Back in my old world, I spent more than 20 years as a management consultant advising organizations that were dealing with disruptive change.

And right before the pandemic, I did a pair of consulting projects, one for university in Australia, one for university in the Philippines, so very different context. As you looked at the disruptive forces that were taking place, it was very clear to us at some point in the future, you were going to have a real disruption of the degree where you would replace 2 or 4-year experience with stackable modular credentials where you'd say, “well, I've got this thing from this place in this thing from that place, I can solve this problem, I can do this task. I'm an expert at this place, etc.” That wasn't going to happen in two years and might not even happen in 20 years. But very clear that if you think of education is something that allows you to do a certain thing, that's going to happen in certain areas, certain trades, certain professions and so on. So you have that is one thing.

The second, I remember a meeting that I had in Singapore right before I left, was in Singapore from 2010 to 2022, with a pretty senior government official in the education department. And their point of view is we traditionally had this model in Singapore where you kind of finish education by the time someone’s 22 or maybe 26, 27, whatever. And their point of view is that has to change where really you view joining a university as essentially getting a lifelong subscription to something that will last for 60, 70, or however long you live, the number of years, because we don't know the things we're going to need to know in the future. So you have to have the ability to continually pause, go back, refresh, relearn what it's like to learn, rekindle your curiosity and really be prepared for whatever comes next.

So in my view, long answer, simple answer is we need to really think of education as a continual thing because the world changes at a pace that really demands it. And the new models that will emerge to deliver against that will be very different than the models we see today, I think. Yeah. I love the lifelong subscription model idea.

Kathleen:

Scott, were you imagining at that time, and thinking about this in the lens within Singapore, that that lifelong education subscription should be granted, or something you go after by way of a university or something you seek out in a myriad of ways, whether it's the traditional corporate learning sense or professional development sense or some other way?

Scott:

Great question. The way that Singapore thought about it, and this is classic Singapore is it takes a village. So, you know, the universities have a role to play. The continual education providers have a role to play. The tech vendors have a role to play, the government has a role to play. And there will ultimately be an ecosystem that delivers against this.

Who exactly is the dominant player in the ecosystem? I think is a very open question, but it's a sort of thing, at least the way Singapore was thinking about it. And this is, a few years ago, a mildly speculative conversation. I don't think there's an official, you know, white paper saying this is the plan or whatever, but the way you're thinking about it is really this is going to be something that multiple parties need to be involved.

You know, kind of my analogy, you think of what it really takes to promote good health. And I use health versus healthcare. You know, healthcare is something bad happens, you get it treated. Health is wellness. And if you think about health, you can think about everything from what happens in your brain and the help of therapists, mindfulness in all sorts of areas there, your body, which you go to trainers and nutritionists and so on. And yes, of course, your physiology. So really health is a holistic thing where there are a range of different providers that have a role to play. Same thing, I think, with education over the long run. 

Kathleen:

Yeah. What a great analogy. I think that holistic thinking of your education, whether it be your work life, your education beyond the workplace as a lifelong holistic ecosystem approach, I think makes a lot of sense.

And, and I think that ties well to our last question, which is really how do you think about and maybe how should we think about future skills? And, you know, there's all the verbiage around future proofing your workforce, right? Which obviously demands that you understand what the future looks like. But how do you think about that just that future proofing aspect of work and career in education?

Scott:

Yeah. Of course, to some degree it's impossible to future proof because, you know, you just don't know what's going to come. So what is the thing that gives you the greatest ability to thrive when change happens? The thing that I try as best possible with my children and as you know, I've got four of them. The thing I try as best possible to really instill in them is a deep sense of curiosity, wonder and openness to continue to explore and learn. And to me, that is the number one thing that could be done to create something that begins to look like future proofing. Because if you have those things, if you have curiosity and wonder and the desire to explore, when change happens, your question is, what's going on here? How might this be good for me? How do I think about it? How do I go and try things? It's all Carol Dweck’s research about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. If you don't have those lenses, change happens and you say, how do I protect the way things used to be? And that's just not going to work in the world that's changing both as quickly and as expansively as it's changing now. You really have to have that curiosity, wonder and desire to explore. 

Inside organizations that means you have to not only encourage it in your employees, you have to create spaces where people can play without fear of repercussion, because that's how you learn about new things. 

So, you know, I've been quoting to people a lot Jon Haidt's book from last year that mostly talks about the challenges of cell phone addiction and why it's bad for children, and that's a whole separate conversation. But the thing that I really like in The Anxious Generation is his fourth prescription, which is return childhood to the children and encourage and allow more free play. And my slight pivot on that is, yes, do that for children and do it for adults as well, because we go to work to work. And of course, you have a job to do and all that, but we need some fun because we need to learn a whole mess of new things. And if we're not having fun, it's just really arduous and you don't do it. 

Kathleen:

Yeah. I love that lens of curiosity, Scott. And I think, you know, that's where the innovation happens. And that's also, in my mind, a way to fight back from the fear that you might feel, in the midst of change. Right? If you maintain a mindset of curiosity, that might help dispel some of the fear that sometimes comes with change.

Yeah. I love that lens of curiosity, Scott. And I think, you know, that's where the innovation happens. And that's also, in my mind, a way to fight back from the fear that you might feel, in the midst of change. Right. If you maintain a mindset of curiosity, that might help dispel some of the fear that sometimes comes with change.

Scott: 

And you know, this fear, I really felt it palpably in the room. Last year, I taught a short format class—we call it a sprint class—on how you can use AI if you're a consultant to help your clients. And, you know, we're on an MBA campus where there are grades, but they don't really matter all that much, they're not reported to recruiters. The sprint class is pass/fail. It's pretty near impossible to fail. If you don't show up and do anything, then maybe you might, but otherwise you're very likely to pass. And this was a sandbox, purely a sandbox for people to play. And I had students at the end write reflection papers about what the experience was like. The number one sentiment in them was fear. They came in being really worried about AI, and I think there's just something about the technology that kind of gets at who we are as humans that again, some people are like, this is cool and fun, but a lot of people are like, yeah, I don't know how I feel about that. 

And of course we need to get over that. We need to find ways to not be afraid and go and have some fun with things. My kids like to do AI-driven songs, you know, whatever. There's lots of different ways to do it. The Delicious the Fish is one of the best ones that's my now-13-year-old Harry did create. Just gave the good prompt to it and it works. 

Kathleen:

I love it, I'll have to look that up. We, at SkillsWave, we had a song, AI make up a song about SkillsWave on our behalf at one of our retreats, which was super fun. 

Scott:

It's, you know, it's silly stuff, but that's how you learn.

You know, I teach another class called Horizon Scanning, where how do you make sense of what's going on. And the instructions I give students as part of that is you have to go and write a report from the future. So pick up a technology you've never used before, try it out and see what you learn. And the number one learning always is what I read and what I experienced were very different things. 

So one of the students created an AI-driven song. It was about being single in Hanover, New Hampshire, that now tops the charts among students at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. I will not reveal that student's name, so I don't get them any trouble. It was a banger though. 

Kathleen:

I will I will absolutely be looking that up. Super fun. Well, thank you so much, Scott, for talking with me today about disruption, education, upskilling, curiosity. It's been a pleasure talking to you as always, and having you on The SkillsWave Podcast. Thank you so much. 

Scott:

My pleasure, Kathleen, thank you very much.

Outro:

Thanks for listening to the SkillsWave podcast. If you're looking to streamline how employees discover, request and register for high-impact upskilling while making education benefits easier to manage, visit SkillsWave.com to see how the free-to-use platform works.