1. “Trading Zone:”
Higher Education Performance
Jim Spohrer
IBM Director University Programs
April 4th, 2013
Convener: Lumina Foundation,
with Center for American Progress, and IBM
Trading Zone (Galison; Gorman): A place or event where different disciplines convene
to share perspectives and make progress on challenges of mutual interest or concern;
often associated with developing better interactional expertise & communication breadth.

2. Trading Zone:
Economists, Policymakers, Service Scientists
Planned Reconvening: T Summit
IBM Almaden, San Jose, CA
March 24-25, 2014

3. Industry Transformation
Donald Clark, TEDxGlasgow

4. Trading Zone:
Economist, Policymakers & Service Scientists

5. Service Science
• Service System Entities
– Types: Businesses, Universities, Governments, etc.
– Nested & Networked Globally
– SD Logic (A2A; Resource Integrators)
• Value Co-Creation Interactions
– Types: Value-Proposition & Governance Mech-based
– Collaboration & Competition Blended
– SD Logic (Operant & Operant Resources)
• Builds On…
– Decades of Service Research (Marketing, Operations, etc.)
– SSME+D; From I to T to Pi-shapes… and beyond!
– T Summit (March 24-25, 2014)
• Measures
– Productivity, Quality, Compliance, Sustainable Innovation
– Holistic Service Systems
• Quality of Life, Balance Challenge & Routine
• Innovativeness, Equity, Sustainability, Resilience

6. Personalized Education
• TREND: The education industry is at the brink of
an IT-enabled transformation
• OPPORTUNITY: Analytics enabled personalized-
at-scale learning for better outcomes and talent
management
• CHALLENGE: Integration of education content
management and analytics solutions

7. SSME: Service Science, Management, and Engineering
Example: Are there “scale laws” of service innovation –
year-over-year compounding effects?
 Problems Year 1: 20%
Input: Student quality
Process: Faculty motivation Year 2: 20%
Output: Industry fit
Year 3: 20%
 Augmentations
A: -20% eLearning certification . . . . . . . .
B. +10% Faculty interest tuning
Year N: 20%
C. +10% On-the-job skills tuning
After a decade the course may look quite different
Service systems are learning systems: productivity, quality, etc.
7 IBM Research © 2007 IBM Corporation

8. Degrees matter
…But it can be costly, American student loan debt at record highs…
8

9. Importance
• Learning (Teaching & Degrees) matter
– Knowledge Construction & Transfer
– Where degree & what degree
– BLS Statistics (Salary & Unemployment Rate)
• Discovery (Research) matters
– Knowledge Creation
• Engagement (Entrepreneurship) matters
– Knowledge Application