Premier University Courses FOR FREE!
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
Fancy doing MIT's "Introduction to Solid State Chemistry" course? Starting right now, at home? For free? You can if you want to. If solid state chemistry doesn't blow your hair back, there are fifteen other courses on their beta "Open Source Courseware' programme. Just for fun, I've just downloaded the Physics 1 course. That means just over 6MB of lecture notes, problem sets with solutions, exams with solutions, links to related resources, and a complete set of 35 videotaped lectures. Wow! Not that I intend doing the course - physics interests me generally but was not my favourite course at university. What does fascinate me is what MIT is giving away to anyone that wants it, FOR FREE!!! And what the effect might be in other areas, if others did the same.
Now let me ask another question. Does your firm derive significant income from selling knowledge? Not the highly customized, original knowledge that is specially developed for highly unique situations, but where a client says: "This is the situation, what do I need to know?" And you check into your firm's knowledge management system and put a document together and send it to them along with an invoice. Where no new knowledge is created; merely existing facts provided as a service. Or any form of training? In other words, the BULK of what many law firms, consulting firms and probably about half a dozen other kinds of professional service firms do every day.
What if somebody makes the knowledge that you are selling available, for free, in a format that clients start to use instead of you? Maybe a Wikipedia containing material quite similar to what you'd find in your firm's knowledge management system, but more comprehensive and accurate, properly indexed and available anywhere that an internet connection is available? (A recent study, by the way, indicated that Wikipaedia and Encyclopaedia Brittanica had about the same level of accuracy when it comes to scientific articles, so the old argument that if it's free then it's no good doesn't apply.)
Punchline: This is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few years, we are going to see the death of all but the most specialized forms of knowledge as a sellable commodity. Is this a frightening threat, or an exhilarating opportunity? Well, that depends on your appetite for moving with the times and finding new sources of competitive advantage well before the old ones die out.