In a May 2026 post in CMR Insights, Professor David Teece and Professor Sohvi Heaton offer key guidance for university executives and boards to manage their institutions through challenging times in the sector.
The authors note, “The confluence of declining state support, rising costs, global competition, technological disruption, and eroding public confidence has created what military planners would call a VUCA environment—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.”
The dynamic capabilities framework - sensing, seizing and transforming - provides a useful toolkit for higher education leaders to figure out what is going wrong, and what to do about it.
The article investigates the historic case studies of UC Berkeley and Stanford University, as well as rising digital technologies. It addresses free speech concerns, and provides tertiary education leaders with smart, active, entrepreneurial approaches for institutional success.