Book Reviews: The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the inside Out: The New Digital Shoreline: How Web 2.0 and Millennials are Revolutionizing Higher Education

The Innovative University, by Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring, attempts to pinpoint how traditional universities’ existing ways of doing business are being threatened and how those universities can overcome those threats. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, and Eyring, a vice president at BYU-Idaho (and a former dean of the Harvard Business School), use their collective knowledge of Harvard and its unique place in American higher education to frame their argument for the reinvention of the traditional university. From the outset, Christensen and Eyring paint a picture of how different stakeholders in higher education can hold dissimilar views of the same issue. In examining the current state of higher education, they point out that parents of students, administrators, professors, and university employees all frame the current state of higher education (and its attendant problems) in terms of their own aspirations and experiences. As a matter of terminology, the authors make the distinction that they use the word university to refer both to traditional universities as well as smaller institutions that self-identify as colleges. They make the case that although colleges do not perform the comprehensive activities of larger universities, enough of colleges’ conventional activities are derived from universities that using the blanket term university is appropriate. For the sake of consistency, their terminology will be used here as well. The heart of the book is what Christensen and Eyring refer to as the “theory of disruptive innovation.” They posit that as a consequence of their reluctance to make difficult choices, traditional universities are not adapting rapidly enough to meet the needs of today’s students. Drawing on a concept developed by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, the authors contend that there are two types of innovation: sustaining and disruptive. The first refers to an innovation that improves existing goods and services (such as a new generation of