Course Creation: Live Blogging — Day #1

This post marks the beginning of a commitment to build and publish an online course.

The current working title for the course has something to do with the words “Bundling” and “Unbundling”. What are Bundling and Unbundling (BaU)?

Recent and well known examples of “bundling” include subscription services like Netflix and Spotify bundling together unlimited movies and music for one low, low price. Even more recently, there has been an “unbundling” of familiar applications such as Facebook into smaller stand-alone apps ranging from Messenger to WhatsApp to Instagram.

This is one level of BaU —Product BaU. Perhaps even more interesting is the notion of Industry BaU. The inspiration for the whole topic came from a post written by Alex Danco on the Bundling and Unbundling of healthcare.

Alex does a quick review of who has been in charge (and therefore who profits) in the healthcare world over the last century or so. It goes something like this:

• Early 20th Century: Doctors as the billing authority
• Mid 20th Century: Physicians bundled into large hospitals and university networks
• Early 21st Century: Hospitals unbundled into smaller local, standardized health clinics driven by Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

This industry level bundling and unbundling is fascinating. Here are a few other examples of industries that have bundled or unbundled and the technologies (including social technologies) that drove those changes:

1. Journalism: Unbundling of full-fledged papers into section-based RSS feeds
2. Transport (Service Economy): Unbundling from service providing companies to individual service providers
3. Education: Bundling from individual tutors into universities, Unbundling of universities into MOOCs and Nanodegrees

These changes are substantial, and with Industry BaU, there is very often a shift in profit-centers (from the newspaper to the social network; from the university to the educational content platform provider).

The reason for building the course is that I believe that #BaU can be a new, powerful lens for understanding which social and technological changes have the capacity to re-center where (and who) the profit-centers are for a given industry.

The problem is that understanding and analyzing what disrupts industries is not a small task. I am overwhelmed at the idea of breaking down the topic into consumable sections, focused questions, and worthwhile discussions.

As I rock back and forth between ecstasy at new findings, and agony at the overwhelming nature of the topic, I plan to use Medium to share new findings, organize course content, connect with interested communities, and promote cutting-edge conversations.

Here’s to the future! #BaU