Musing: I'm reading through some interesting articles on organizational
ecology.
Age dependence is an interesting concept. Liability of obsolescence and senescence might explain why Best Buy, Research in
Motion, and Palm have gone from business
juggernauts to what they are now. Also possibly explains why Borders and Circuit
City were unable to recover. Internal misalignment and inability to
adapt to different customer expectations really do seem to play major
factors.
I'd bet that the same holds true in education. The inability
to change and adapt to new ways of thinking about education makes some
organizations more prone to fail. The biggest difference is that in
public education there is government funding supporting the institutions, so establishments can go on for years being outmoded and increasingly out of touch without it being immediately fatal. So it would seem true innovation as a response to market pressure, and the acceptance of innovation, not only by visionaries but also by the majority of the organization, that resists this sort of decline. In education it is the ability to recognize new trends (not trying to set them necessarily), and then redirecting the organization to embrace these trends that helps keep an educational institution relevant.
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