Innovative Strategy Making in Higher Education (review)

Innovative Strategy Making in Higher Education is an excellent primer for understanding how notions about strategy have changed in the last 30 years. Perhaps the big question is: Does higher education need strategy and, if so, what kind? But before we get into that question, more about the book.

Martinez and Wolverton provide an excellent overview of the strategy literature showing its progression from strategic planning to competitive analysis and innovation. Business and industry have moved much further along in their concepts of strategy and now focus on strategic planning. The authors are concerned that campuses are not doing any competitive analysis or innovative strategy-making; instead, they are mired in old-school strategic planning processes with mixed results.

In competitive analysis, an organization looks at its competitors in the industry, examining the competitive strategies and planning that give some organizations an advantage over others. The authors describe how strategy can create innovation on campuses through such processes as strategic canvassing, innovative entrepreneurialism, and innovative competitiveness. Essentially, they argue, colleges and universities need to examine possible innovations that will create a unique strategy that will make them more competitive.

After a very compelling introduction to strategy making, Martinez and Wolverton describe the process of strategic planning, including not only its benefits but also some of its pitfalls: for example, its lengthy process, wasting many human resources, the resistance that results from the required commitment, the organization’s inability to respond rapidly to changes in the environment, and the fact that the results can end up being very generic and unstrategic.

A great strength of the book is its detailed case studies and examples. For example, Chapter 3 describes strategic planning processes that have worked well and others that worked less well. Practitioners will find particularly helpful the level of detail provided about how to conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), or how to create goals and objectives.

Martinez and Wolverton make a case in Chapters 4–5 that strategy is of increasing importance to higher education as an industry. While I was not convinced by their argument, I found the discussion well written and interesting.

In Chapter 6, they describe how organizations that seek competitive advantage employ cost leadership, differentiation, and focus to create a competitive advantage. Chapter 7 provides helpful examples on strategy canvassing in which organizations compare themselves to the entire industry in terms of certain competitive factors—parking, price, accessibility, convenient class times, and the like.

The idea that strategy processes can actually create change in higher education is quite appealing. But as a scholar of change, I find this assertion naive. In fact, studies of strategic planning demonstrate that these processes alone hardly ever create meaningful change—which the authors concede. Studies of change suggest that rational planning processes are only a small part of what creates change. Instead, leaders need to appeal to organizational norms and values, create processes to foster a shared sense of urgency and an understanding of the change, develop earning processes that help people perform their work differently, and a host of other assorted issues.

I also worry about the type of changes that innovative strategy making might cause. For example, strategy making might well suggest increasing the cost of higher education because students will think a more expensive education is better quality. Is that really the best decision for higher education? If cost-cutting is necessary to draw in more students but negatively impacts the program’s quality, is that decision the best decision? Should institutions be focused more on branding than on the quality of the teaching and learning environment? These kinds of questions worry me as I think about the types of change encouraged by innovative strategy making.

Chapter 9 provides some ideas for innovation that seem more aligned with how higher education might want to engage in strategy making. For example, Lane Community College, in Eugene, Oregon, embraced a green initiative; Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, established interdisciplinary...