Innovation and competitiveness through lifelong learners development

Innovation, roughly, means to introduce or replace something to create new value (Oxford Learners Dictionary). Yet, an addendum is required because innovation is more of a process to change establishments by introducing something new that adds value (O’Sullivan & Dooley, 2008). Employees are supposed to be the most valuable asset of any organization as long as they keep generating value. Nonetheless, an increasing amount of companies agree that a worrying number of their collaborators are neither proposing nor adding value due to a lack of skill upgrade. This affects organizations’ competitiveness (Arifin & Ikhfan, 2018).

However, corporations insist that recently graduated candidates are unprepared to face the reality of present jobs (Delgado, 2019). Research shows that college build and strengthen the skills and abilities related to a certain field, but do not seed learning eagerness, nor an interdisciplinary approach to a global and interconnected job market (Barnés, 2019).

It is necessary to evaluate whether universities are promoting integral approaches to deliver value that fosters innovation.

Higher Education today: micro-credentials and certifications

In México, 50% of graduates work in something unrelated to their own degrees (Expansión, 2020; OECD 2019). Worldwide the statistic round toward a staggering the 60% (Devincenzi, 2019; ObservatorioRH, 2019; Expansion, 2020). These are some reasons: in the US graduates move to big cities because there is “a wider variety of job opportunities that can potentially fit the skills of anyone” (The Washington Post, 2013) , but not closer to what they majored. In Latin America one of the main reasons to work in something different of previous studies is that jobs with a sustainable income are mostly in regional or local industry related-to-the-area, hence some degrees become useless and people have to adapt.

In 2014 Bentley University published a paper that stated that there was a 37% gap between the knowledge undergraduates acquired from universities and what any industry actually required. Candidates had to pay to increase their abilities and knowledge for universities were not close to the expectation.

By 2020 the OECD declared that 50% of college graduates work in something different of what they studied because companies consider them professionally unprepared. “Companies are looking for young people that can effectively apply their knowledge, but that are willing to adapt to any situation”, the OECD stated. However, even though the academic world tries to adapt to this context, the governmental and institutional bureaucracy, make it very difficult to keep up with the professional requirements.

Universities are creating new study programs for future jobs to fight back their apparent obsolescence. STEM and ICT degrees are rising (Forbes, 2021): Business Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, Data Sciences, and Cybersecurity, among others, yet uncertainty remains for what will the future hold for higher education programs.

During the 90’s, a professional demand was identified: the rising need to stay professionally updated. Therefore, marketers upgraded to e-commerce skills; media professionals developed digital know-hows; physicians partnered with engineers; administrators modernized business models and thus lifelong learning gained focus. Academy responded with the development of practical master degrees, detailed doctoral programs, and executive education.

A new player emerged by the 2000’s: non traditional educational providers offered short courses, certifications, and micro-credentials. These bidders made specific knowledge desirable and affordable by bundling practice and theory with practitioner coaches, instead of academic educators. Though not new, these courses enable learners to stay engaged intellectually to remain current (Oliver, 2019)

This phenomenon displayed a hard truth: undergraduate and graduate degrees seem no longer enough to fulfill job vacancies. Which are the skills that companies are looking for at all levels? The most common are critical thinking, some math, adaptability, communication skills, team work, and resilience (Allen & Van der Velden, 2011).

The micro-credential boom

Google has been specializing digital marketers for a decade with its digital academy to master Google’s Ad platform. In 2015 it offered four certifications: ad words, display, video, and analytics. By 2021, it has a complete skillshop with 10 different courses with a variety of expertise levels. These credentials are cherished by hiring companies even more than complete marketing degrees, yet few universities in Latin America ask for any of Google’s or Facebook’s certificates to aid their students into getting better entry-level jobs. Having any of those certifications improves the possibility of getting a higher salary, according to ManPower Group (2020).

The development of the above-mentioned abilities is also known as micro-credentials and is defined as “a representation of learning, awarded for completion of a short program that is focused on a discrete set of competencies (i.e., skills, knowledge, attributes), and is sometimes related to other credentials” (Pichette, et al, 2021, p.6). These courses are mostly taken online and are a good business opportunity.

However, the wide offer of these courses is a strong declaration from both, workers and companies, that something is missing. On the one hand, employees and working professionals prefer learning a skill that allows them to have a specific differentiator and thus a better income in a short period of time, instead of studying a full-time and expensive degree. On the other hand, organizations favor experience and practice with the latest technology, models, or programming language. Perhaps this situation could just be addressed as a sample of the deficiency of long-term strategy visualization, but empirical data supports otherwise (Oliver, 2019).

Let’s deepen in some examples:

A Stanford graduate ideated Masterclass in 2014. It is an online education platform where top notch practitioners and “well-known instructors in their field” share hacks and proven paths to success. By 2021, the company was valued in US$ 2.75 billion. The “Masterclass” format has influenced other organizations, such as Universidad Panamericana (UP), in Mexico, that, in addition to its more than 100 postgraduate degrees and continuing education programs, hired GrandMasters, a local startup that replicates the Masterclass idea. This endeavor encompasses a How to be happy program, modern Mexican cuisine, and sports journalism, to mention some.

In 2018, Glassdoor published that 15 large and global corporations preferred certain skills over a college degree and it was mostly happening in the tech sector (the article was updated in November 2021). Nonetheless, consultancy firms, consumer goods, and even banking, looked after “nontraditional” profiles. Google, Facebook, IBM, BofA, Chipotle, E&Y, Apple, Hilton, Costco, and more, were on the list. What these organizations were looking for was specialized knowledge in specific topics, but predominantly, all candidates should be adaptable and eager to learn in order to succeed. Having or not a degree is no longer a barrier as long as applicants have dominance over a certain soft skills or technical competences.

While the SarsCov19 pandemic hit the world, professionals turned to MOOCs (massive open online course) and learnt how to tackle Microsoft’s most used software, people learned about communications, they even gained cooking experience, and experimented with design. Coursera added 30 million students in 2020 (Garduño, 2021), and its partner universities bloomed too, yet few people finished their courses.

Other teaching platforms flourished as well. Domestika, a Spanish startup now based in California, is fulfilling a personal void in people’s life by teaching crafts and professionalizing hobbies, while Crehana, another startup created in Perú, is taking over specialized areas, like Digital Customer Management or Leadership.

Company owned degrees

Entrepreneur Media tried to launch a one-year course resembling a Master in Business Administration with special focus on developing entrepreneurial capabilities. The program did not have an academic foundation but relied strongly in practitioner facilitators. It eventually evolved into conferences and events, with a strong focus on teaching entrepreneurial and business skills to young venturers.

Alphabet announced during 2020 the development of their own certificates that would be compare to a traditional four-year university degree. Google’s holding developed five programs, each one lasting a semester, in order for people to decide its own path. According to the Vice-president’s briefing, these would be similar to university degrees: “In our own hiring, we will now treat these new career certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles”, the release quoted.

Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, and with the change, it also launched a degree in Augmented Reality Development (Meta, 2021) to bring people closer to the requirements of its meta verse. Yet, the social media company has been teaching advertising proficiency, to social behaviors, and with less success, some digital ethics since 2014.

Disruptive education

A different approach to higher education started growing in the 90’s, the founders of this model, though different per institution, called it ‘disruptive education’. In this curriculum design subjects develop around an area of expertise and evolve according to the current market needs (Menárguez, 2016). Lectures and traditional teacher exposition are almost null. Moreover, they offer immersive learning by working directly on different projects as consultants for hiring companies which provide relevant experience.

Some of these universities are Kaospilot, in Denmark; Minerva, in the US; and with a not-so-disruptive approach, but different from traditional teaching methods: Hyper Island, in Sweden, and Centro, in Mexico. The above schools pillar their study programs in the practical development of skills and competences. Study programs last between three and four years.

Though experimentation on higher education models has existed for several year, the 2020 pandemic triggered the execution of them. Some of the most used by universities worldwide are the Flipped Classroom Model, popularized around 2007 by Jon Bergman and Aaron Sams, the Flex or Blended approach (Hrastinski, 2019), and the 70-20-10 (Crehana, 2021) approach. A possible evaluation of the application of these methods will be clear by 2025.

This project might enlighten educational and business researchers to approach training from different perspectives, correspondently to what is expected from future professionals. A question to be addressed is certainly the role micro-credentials are playing and will have in the future of education.

Research question and hypothesis

The long-term objective of this project is to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum for undergraduates with special focus on adaptability and innovation that can be undertaken by educative institutions or even as an entrepreneurial venture.

The curriculum refers to the academic content, subjects, workshops, and approaches that any educational institution poise for the development of their students. In Latin America, BA study plans endure on average seven years before any major update, while master programs renew every 10 years. Teachers and lecturers are encouraged to adequate their courses according to the industry needs, but still fall short.

Other goals include the acknowledgment of the skills that develop adaptive profiles, as well as to provide a comprehensive insight of the areas in which workers show more unpreparedness; other sub-objectives could be:

To learn more about the rationale of why people reject academic instructors to specialize in most practical issues?
Why do universities seem to be falling behind this knowledge sharing, and why aren’t they providing these courses?
What is the best answer for the specialization dilemma: either a person learns too much about one area of expertise, or they know about a plethora of subjects but superficially?

The intention of this research is to answer these two questions:

RQ1. Which are the areas that universities should focus on to develop competitive and innovative graduates that add value to organizations?

RQ2. How should these courses coil to encourage lifelong learning in the world’s changing professional environment?

On this line, other hypotheses can be unraveled:

H1. The most valuable skills companies look for in any candidate are critical thinking, creativity, math specialty, communications skills, and team work (based on Gerstein’s (2014).

H2. Lifelong learning is self-stimulated by curious personalities.

H3. Professional experience can be obtained by changing the teaching approach with real-life practical cases and in a professional environment, such as internships.

H4. Allowing students to freely elect courses will provide with unique professional and adaptable profiles to foster innovation.

H5. Micro-credentials are not replacing what universities should be doing, but seem to have a higher intrinsic value.

H6. Academic teaching is based on theories and close regulated experiments, and for that reason it seems to been far from practical execution and, therefore academic professors are rejected.

Theoretical approach and methodology

Lifelong learning has to be driven by personal will (Hase, 2016), thus becoming self-determined training known as heutagogy. This approach can be used as the main theoretical frame because it emphasizes the improvement of professional skills such as autonomy, capacity, and capability, therefore developing learners who are well-prepared for the complexities of today’s workplace (Hase & Kenyon, 2001).

Heutagogy is defined “as the natural progression from previous educational methodologies with a particular focus on competency development (Hase & Kenyon, 2001)”. Building up, heutagogy emphasizes the development of new skills on a permanent basis (Blaschke & Hase, 2016).

Along with heutagogy, the Knowledge Gap Theory (Donohue, et al, 1975) can complete the theoretical approach by providing appropriate insights to explain the reasons behind companies’ allegations about educative institutions lagging on training professionals adequately. Further debate on this issue could include the responsibility transfer of specific education from the state to private owners.

Even though the knowledge gap is a mass communication theory, it states that educated and wealthy people acquire information faster than those in lower socioeconomic levels, it also declares that knowledge is distributed unevenly among society.

The gap considers that being rich or poor conditions knowledge, so “persons with more formal education would be expected to have the higher reading and comprehension abilities” (Donohue, et al, 1975). In this case, holding “the wealthy” as students with access to micro-credentials or an alternative method, could determine the axioms of the theory applied to this research. For instance, one of the principles assert that people with better education have superior communication skills, hence people that have been trained to adapt are better at adjusting. Therefore, the discussion might also include if micro-credentials should close the gap or are actually widening it, and if the latter rises, how can institutions compensate the rupture.

By identifying the correlation between the will to learn (heutagogy) and the size of the breach of actually knowing that learning has become a life-time activity, can illuminate the spectrum of expertise areas required to close the gap and the path to make knowledge more accessible.

The research techniques should include comparative approaches and surveys to answer RQ1; and for RQ2, interviews, observation, and focus groups.

Research design

This research project is relevant for academia, professional training, and businesses. Firstly, the results can reshape how education approaches new formats in order to lead for innovation within companies, enhancing learners and learning. In this line, the European Commission recognizes the changing nature of the labor market along with the employers’ demand on flexibility. Secondly; it contributes to the development of lifelong learners by identifying the skills to unfold new professional paths through micro-learning and thus, new knowledge. Thirdly, almost any business and entrepreneurial venture could enrich their wage with adaptable professionals that can play different roles. The insights might be used to develop experimental career programs to actually respond for future demands.

The research will be conducted in three years and involves studying the MBR at LMU, literature review, relevant courses, as well as field work. Results should be disclosed to academia and the participant repositories, such as universities and organizations. It is suggested that partner institutions get workshops based on the outcomes to 1) identify knowledge gaps and biases from graduates, and 2) develop self-determined paths for coworkers. Universities, colleges, and education providers can benefit by obtaining information on the areas that require the most attention in order to satisfy the current needs, whilst closing the disparity between education and execution to develop a more competitive society.

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