I spent just over one hour this evening watching a live webcast of a town hall meeting organized by Charles Schwab and Company, Inc. It was held in Colorado, and there were two audiences: live and web. Most of the guest speakers worked for Schwab, but they had invited New York Times business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin as well.
All in all, a fascinating experience.
I wrote down several points that interested me:
1. "I think the consumer is going to dig in his heels and change his (consumption) habits, ignoring the incentives on the table (to borrow and spend)." Liz Ann Sonders, SVP, Chief Investment Strategist for Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
2. "I think this is great, that we have an opportunity to share (our) thoughts here." Live audience member, 70+ years old.
3. "At this time, we don't have a business model that makes sense. [...] We have 6 million readers online daily, which represents 15% of our revenue. We have 1.1 million papers daily, which represents 85% of revenue. That doesn't make sense. [...] Our challenge over the next 5-10 years is to find the model that works; we need to find that model sooner rather than later." Andrew Ross Sorkin, Chief Mergers and Acquisitions Reporter, The New York Times. [In response to a live audience member's question regarding the sustainability of the newspaper]
The corollaries for schools:
1. How families approach independent education as a household budget line-item has begun to change and will continue to change. This is not a one-year phenomenon.
2. Charles Schwab Co., as a corporation, invited direct contact with its customers, emphasizing strategic listening. How many schools do this as a matter of course? It was tremendously effective this evening. What is more, this town hall meeting spanned the globe, reaching Schwab customers everywhere. They have embraced the possibilities of Web 2.0, integrating it into how they do business. This evening, they showcased their "administrative team," if you will. These folks were there to take questions, to take some heat, and to provide their thoughts on trends and issues. The "admin team" provided perspective, vision...and confidence, simply by engaging each questioner directly, whether from Canada or from 24 feet away.
3. If The New York Times doesn't have a sustainable model, should we be so brazen as to think that our current model is forever sustainable? Consider the discrepancy between online readers and paper readers that Sorkin highlights; the revenue model is actually backward! Think of the time, labor, and costs involved with producing the print version of the Times, as opposed to the online version, which is reaching six times the print readership! The paper is still being read, just not in its traditional format. The corollary here is with your school's curriculum - are you involved in an exchange of money for a product that could be delivered in a different (and more accessible/desirable) format? How might that affect your value proposition? How long are you willing to wait to find that new business model? Longer than the Times?
In the past, it seems as if we in the independent school world have been reading studies that were done on for-profit companies (usually several years after the fact). Now it may be the case that for-profit and not-for-profit companies are discovering new business models simultaneously.
Such synchrony has tremendous potential.
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