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University of Maryland, College Park

Surviving Disruptive Technologies (On Demand)

University of Maryland, College Park via Coursera

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Overview

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The purpose of this course is to help individuals and organizations survive when confronted with disruptive technologies that threaten their current way of life. We will look at a general model of survival and use it to analyze companies and industries that have failed or are close to failing. Examples of companies that have not survived include Kodak, a firm over 100 years old, Blockbuster and Borders. It is likely that each of us has done business with all of these firms, and today Kodak and Blockbuster are in bankruptcy and Borders has been liquidated. Disruptions are impacting industries like education; Coursera and others offering these massive open online courses are a challenge for Universities. In addition to firms that have failed, we will look at some that have survived and are doing well. What are their strategies for survival?

By highlighting the reasons for the decline of firms and industries, participants can begin to understand how to keep the same thing from happening to them. Through the study of successful organizations, we will try to tease out approaches to disruptions that actually work. Our ultimate objective is to develop a strategy for survival in a world confronting one disruptive technology after another.

Syllabus

  • 1.1
    • A Model and framework to help understand disruptive technologies
  • 1.2
    • Some examples of companies that were not able to survive disruptive technologies
  • 2.1
    • A company that did not survive and its disruptor
  • 2.2
    • Another story of disruption and a summary of our examples
  • 3.1
    • Newspapers are an important component of a democratic society; the Internet threatens them in a number of ways
  • 3.2
    • Social media has transformed the way people relate to each other, but it has a disruptive component that is worrying
  • 4.1
    • Two companies in this module are private and are very successful; a quasi-public agency has a hard time competing with them and their technology
  • 13
    • Conclusions about disruption
  • 14
    • Suggestions for how to respond to a disruptive technology
  • 15
    • Survival in the physical world

Taught by

Professor Hank Lucas

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Reviews

3.0 rating, based on 5 Class Central reviews

4.7 rating at Coursera based on 55 ratings

Start your review of Surviving Disruptive Technologies (On Demand)

  • Pete Olds

    Pete Olds completed this course, spending 4 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be easy.

    This course was worth it for the lecturer's Case Studies alone. I have recommended a lot of people take this as a great way of getting a broader perspective of business and change.

    And it was all well presented - to the point where this is one of the few lecturers I actively look for with the intention of enrolling in his courses.

    It looks like the material has got a little corrupt since I did the course - which is a real shame Hopefully Coursera will fix that and restore the old stuff to it's rightful state :-)
  • Adtya

    Adtya completed this course and found the course difficulty to be easy.

    I really like the instructor but there is serious issue with the course content! Please remove irrelevant videos. I'm sorry.

    Message to the instructor: I Do respect you, Sir. I appreciate the effort you have made in making the course videos. But all the knowledge in your course is fit for a book, not a course. A book would be quite good, but for a course the material is really poor. I feel bad to say this. I wish you update the content.
  • Profile image for Candice Hincksman
    Candice Hincksman

    Candice Hincksman completed this course, spending 2 hours a week on it and found the course difficulty to be medium.

    The most poorly organised MOOC I've ever taken. There were technical problems the staff refused to attend to. Communication about these issues was absent. Assignments were vague and disorganised. Someone needs to write a book called "I survived 'Surviving Disruptive Technologies'".
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Very interesting content and the forums were very useful and informative. The class is only in it's second iteration and so there was some confusion with grading and admin support.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous completed this course.

    Very interesting class. I found the assignments time consuming, but the lectures were very interesting.
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