James Drogan

In Bizz School Re-Thinking 6/19/5 I made mention of the gap hypothesis that had emerged from my involvement with CUNY via Baruch in November 2003.  The hypothesis is that the gap between what academia produces and what business wants is constantly increasing.  In the blog post to which I have provided the link above I concluded:

Rather than pointing fingers, academia and business ought to come to the realization it is in their common interests to work together to resolve the issue. The combination of academically qualified and business qualified teachers is a must. The trick in all this is to somehow prevent class warfare.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger has taken up the same issue in Bridging the Gap between Business and Government.  He, like I, seems to be searching for the motivator that will prompt academia and business to to collaborate to close the gap.  This is not, by the way, to say that none of this is going on.  The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics Partnership Program is an example of collaboration of the sort that I and, I think, Wladawsky-Berger have in mind.  Fair disclosure:  I had a relationship with this program during my career at IBM.

I wonder, however, if the gap is not self-perpetuating given the different missions of academia and business. 

So, to my friends in academia and business alike, I remind you we are in this together and, quite likely, more progress can be made if we work together than if we wander around, occasionally bumping into each other.