Transformational Education > New technologies
Warren McFarlan on the "third wave" of technology
Transcript
And again, we were running very much on an autopilot until 1995, when Kim Clark came in. And by 1995 the strain lines were all over the place. The Internet was coming. That there were very different things that needed to be done. And John McArthur, again, in one of the really great decisions of his deanship, basically wanted to leave a quick win for his successor coming in. And so he had basically frozen the investment in IT on the campus for the previous two years. I mean, I had to do subterfuge when I was then head of the division of research that sort of once a quarter I could sneak in two PCs for faculty members who were just being killed. …
And when Kim came in there was a war chest. The Internet had—became pretty clear. He brought Dave Upton in, and spent in the order of $11 million in four months to drive the entire architecture, which now suffuses the campus in every considerable way.
And that really was sort of the third great wave of innovation. So we've had three big periods at the school, each one done in the context of our mission as a school of general management, and has wound up changing what happens in our classroom, changes what happens in the administration. And, in fact, changes the very topics we teach about.