Georgia Tech is well-positioned to provide leadership in shaping the definition and structure of the globally integrated university, particularly from the perspective of the U.S. technological research university, and it is timely to do so. More specifically, key issues for identification and discussion are:
- The forces and benefits that are causing some U.S. universities to globalize,
- The costs and risks associated with globalization,
- Successful strategies and best practices for globalization,
- The policy implications, economic and otherwise, for the nation.
Addressing these issues internally are of critical importance in shaping the Georgia Tech international strategy.
Establishing Leadership
A leadership opportunity, at least eventually, could be a one-day national symposium, lead by Georgia Tech and serving to establish Georgia Tech as an international thought leader on this topic. For such a symposium, participants outside of Georgia Tech might include representatives from other (U.S. and foreign) universities, the staff of the House Committee on Science and Technology, state-level agencies that promote economic development, USDOC, the Council on Competitiveness, the Sloan Foundation, multi-national companies, etc. We would have to differentiate such a symposium from conferences on how best to run international travel and semester abroad programs. We should be able to quickly list our human resources who could contribute here. We should be able to tie this idea in with a multitude of GT global visioning statements, lists of international activities, etc., that have been produced over the last several years.
Strategic and Tactical Questions and Comments:
What can we learn from our corporate, as well as academic, colleagues about establishing and sustaining an international presence? Are there best practices and business models for a university to ‘go global’ that are emerging and evolving, as they have in industry? We acknowledge the international nature of many corporations and the challenges that a company faces when it decides to become a multi-national corporation or a globally integrated enterprise. Corporate growth is achieved either organically or through mergers and acquisitions, or some mixture of the two. Are there parallels in academia? Do we need to better understand ‘due diligence’ in exploring international opportunities? Do we need to better understand at a meta-level the globalization of the university (e.g., limits on management bandwidth for dealing with international opportunities, the need for institutional assimilation)? Companies from different industries meet the challenge of doing business in an international environment in different ways. How suitable is a university structurally for becoming a multi-national organization? Are there ways to modify the structure of the traditional university to allow it to become more easily decentralized and international? What are the unique characteristics, as compared to a multi-national company, for a university to go global? For example, faculty travel internationally regularly and take sabbaticals off-shore, but moving graduate students can be a significant impediment. Are best practices and best business models different for different types of universities, e.g., public versus private, traditional comprehensive university versus a technologically focused university? Will the movement of a few ‘first leaders’ promote a general trend to globalization in the U.S. academy? Thus, there are both ‘firm’ level and ‘industry’ level questions and issues.
A Policy Question and Comments:
Innovation enables economic development, and education enables innovation. As manufacturing and services are globalizing, innovation is also globalizing. What should be the role of the U.S. university in enabling the globalization of innovation? What are the implications - benefits, costs, and both upside and downside risks - to the U.S. economy? Does there need to be a discussion on the alignment between the global ambitions of the U.S. university and the Nation’s economic interests? (The same question could be asked about aligning the global ambitions of the U.S.-based globally integrated enterprise with the Nation’s economic interests; reference Toyota and Japan, Nokia and Finland.)
Related references:
- Economist, Asia’s Skills Shortage, pp. 59-61, 18 August 2007
- Palmisano, S. J., “The Globally Integrated Enterprise”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006
- The Economist, “The Physical Internet: a survey of logistics”, 17 June 2006
- Butner, K., et al., Reshaping Supply Chain Management: Vision & Reality, IBM, 2007
- Zook, C., “Finding Your Next Core Business”, HBR, pp. 66-75, April 2007
- The Economist, “Globalization’s Offspring”, p. 11, 7 April 2007
- Stalk, G., K. Waddell, “Surviving the China Rip Tide: How to Profit from the Supply Chain Bottleneck”, Boston Consulting Group (www.bcg.com), May 2007
- G. Schuster, Testimony to the House Committee on Science and Technology, 26 July 2007
- Dean, Cornelia, “Determined to Re-inspire a Culture of Innovation”, NYT, 10 July 2007 (article that describes Bill Wulf’s notion of innovation and the ecology of innovation)