October Newsletter

All-

Fall is here and we hope your jobs, school, job hunt are going well. Apologize for not sending this out sooner this month. We hope to send out the November newsletter towards the beginning of the month. I would like to thank Michael Alemany, Barrett Edgington, and LaDon Linde for sharing their experiences with us (see attached document). If any of you are interested in sharing your experience please let me know. Also, feel free to forward this on to anyone who you think might benefit from it. Although we are sending this out to strategy majors and alums, LaDon and I forward it to many people who find the articles and write ups to be beneficial.

Here is the link to the blog with the newsletter: www.byustrategy.blogspot.com

Other sites:

www.twitter.com/byustrategy
www.linkedin.com search: byu strategy

Religion

http://www.byub.org/talks/Talk.aspx?id=2738

This link has an interview between John Tanner (BYU Academic Vice-President, husband of Susan Tanner) and Clayton Christensen. During the first 15 minutes he explains his business innovation theories and then during the last 13 minutes he relates them to the gospel. He suggests four ways his theories applies to the LDS church, and it's fascinating.

A couple of highlights to entice you to listen, but there are others:
-in wards with sacrament attendance under 100, members give missionaries 3x more referrals per person than in wards with attendance over 100; that's staggering!
-innovations in companies generally bubble up from the bottom, and then senior management's job is to implement the good innovations across the entire company. The same has happened in the church (missionary discussions, topical guide, sunday school all happened this way). We need to make sure that at a local level we seek inspiration and are innovative in the ways we do our callings and don't just rely on the Brethren to guide all programs/actions. Their job is to implement the good ones.


Book Review: Disrupting Class ( The Innovator's Prescription Review will be in November Newsletter)

Real improvement in both health care and education has been elusive. The two books co-authored by Clayton Christensen use the business innovation ideas that explain how entire industries are changed and apply these ideas to education and health-care reform. Because Christensen’s ideas explain how impressive changes occur in industries, the books give a roadmap that shows how real change can happen in these as well. (FYI--Disrupting Class is about half as long, but The Innovator’s Prescription is extremely comprehensive in explaining how to improve the health-care system.)

Here’s a few examples of ideas, but there are a ton more in the books.

Disrupting Class
Our schools are essentially based on the factory system. Schools move students from class to class and grade to grade and hope that educated students come out at the end. However, every student learns differently, so how come in the day of iTunes, Amazon, and NetFlix, which are customized to preferences, do we teach every student in the same way. Computers on the other hand, can deliver content at different paces and ways in order to help students get customized learning experiences and help every single student learn more. That is exciting! Also, the teacher becomes more impactful when computers deliver content and do the assessment because teachers have more time to focus on individual students and act as mentors.

As I consider my schooling experience, I don’t think I learned anything in fifth grade because I had a poor teacher. That would never happen if computers were used to instruct. Also, I could have taken Mandarin Chinese, economics, and AP Physics in high school if they were taught on a computer.

What we want in the U.S. is an education system in which every resource focuses on what it does best: computers deliver the content, teachers mentor and guide, and extra activities and programs help fulfill needs such as health, socialization, exercise, and fun.

Articles

Whole Foods CEO and founder discusses politics, his company, and other interesting topics: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574447114058870676.html#mod=djemWMP

Malcolm Gladwell discusses whether dogfighting is more like football (very long but a great read):
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell

Coke CEO on why CocaCola didn't make America fat:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574455464120581696.html?mod=djem_jiewr_swwgn_100809

Fantasy Basketball

If there is anyone interested in joining a fantasy basketball league. Let me know and I will create one.