When I look across higher education right now, I don’t see a shortage of ideas.
I see institutions overwhelmed by pressure.
AI is accelerating everything. Budgets are tightening. Enrollment patterns are shifting. Expectations – from students, boards, and the market – are rising faster than most institutions can respond.
And the reality is this: most leaders aren’t struggling to understand what needs to change.
They’re struggling to execute change while everything is hitting at once.
That’s exactly why I had this conversation with Steve Spinelli, President of Babson College.
Because Steve isn’t just talking about change; he’s been leading it for decades.
Stop Teaching Entrepreneurship. Start Operating Like It.
One of the most powerful ideas Steve shared is deceptively simple:
Thought without action is frivolous. Action without thought is dangerous.
At Babson, they’ve built an entire model around that belief.
From the first week of college, students aren’t just learning theory; they’re building. They’re forming teams, launching businesses, managing capital, and creating value in real time.
And what that does is fundamentally different.
It doesn’t just teach students about entrepreneurship.
It trains them to think, act, and operate like entrepreneurs.
That raises a bigger question for all of us:
What would happen if institutions operated the same way?
The Real Barrier Isn’t Strategy. It’s Structure.
Over the years, I’ve sat with hundreds of CIOs, presidents, and provosts. The pattern is consistent.
The challenge isn’t a lack of vision.
It’s that the systems, governance models, and incentives inside institutions weren’t built for speed, experimentation, or continuous reinvention.
Steve put it plainly:
We’re asking people who’ve spent 20-30 years succeeding in a system to suddenly behave differently without changing the system itself.
That’s where most transformation efforts break down.
If we want institutions to move faster, we have to:
- Create space for experimentation
- Reward learning, not just perfection
- Fund internal “startups” inside the institution
- And rethink how teams collaborate across disciplines
Because the future doesn’t belong to siloed expertise. It belongs to integrated thinking.
AI Isn’t the Threat. It’s the Multiplier.
There’s a lot of fear around AI in higher education.
But Steve reframed it in a way that stuck with me:
There are more problems in the world today than there were 10 years ago. Which means one thing. We’re not solving them fast enough.
AI changes that.
It gives us the ability to:
- Ask better questions
- Analyze more complex data
- Build and test ideas faster
- Scale learning in ways we’ve never seen before
This isn’t the end of entrepreneurship.
It’s an acceleration of it.
And for higher education, it creates a massive opportunity:
To move beyond the constraints of time, location, and scale, and truly deliver learning anywhere, anytime, at depth.
Discipline Is the Difference
One of the most important lessons in this conversation had nothing to do with technology.
It was about discipline.
In moments like this, it’s easy for institutions to chase every opportunity: AI initiatives, new programs, partnerships, pilots.
But without a clear strategy, that turns into noise.
As Steve put it, the mistake to avoid is simple:
A series of one-off initiatives that don’t connect to a larger vision.
The institutions that win in this next era won’t do everything.
They’ll:
- Know what they’re uniquely great at
- Double down on it
- And build systems that consistently deliver against it
The Shift Is Already Happening
If there’s one thing I took away from this conversation, it’s this:
The future of higher education isn’t about teaching entrepreneurship.
It’s about becoming entrepreneurial.
That means:
- Operating with agility
- Embracing experimentation
- Aligning strategy with execution
- And continuously reinventing how value is created
Because standing still is no longer an option.
A Final Thought
If the COVID era forced institutions to react, the AI era is forcing them to evolve.
And with that comes a choice.
We can continue to operate within models that were built for a different time.
Or we can build institutions that are designed for uncertainty, speed, and continuous change.
Higher education has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead here.
Not just to adapt, but to define what comes next.
The question is: will we take it?
– Wayne
