Don Tapscott is making the digital leap.
Tapscott is a management guru,
consultant and the author of 14 books, which mostly discuss technology
and how the digital revolution is changing society. His latest venture
embraces the wired world he so often discusses; instead of the printed
word, it comes in the form of an
app.
The
Thinkers50
organization, colloquially referred to as the “Oscars of management
thinking,” chose Tapscott as the first person upon whom to base this
kind of compendium app, with plans to release more to highlight the
people it honours.
“I’m the only one of the top 10 that
is sort of an expert on the digital thing, and they said, ‘So I guess
that makes you the world’s leading thinker on how the digital revolution
affects things,’” Tapscott says. “Between you and me, that and four
bucks will get me a Frappuccino at Starbucks.”
The author says he is flattered by
the honour and looks forward to fleshing it out, as the app is currently
an amalgam of articles, interviews, podcasts and previously written
essays.
“A lot of this material pre-existed
and it wasn’t collected anywhere, and (creating) this particular app was
very different than the process of writing a book. Normally, I do a
massive research project and that informs everything that happens in my
next book,” he says. “But everything is a remix, even books, and I found
this quite instructive, in that all of this material was out there on
all these topics and it had never really been brought together into some
kind of integrated thing.”
The app looks at 10 areas Tapscott
believes will be radically changed by technology in the coming years,
such as education, banking, health, science and more. He plans to add
more social features to the app and update it as he continues to
research the various content areas.
Tapscott does believe we’re on the cusp of big changes, including starting to truly revolutionize how we teach students.
“The problems with education and the
lacklustre performance of students are really reflective of the fact
that we really have an industrial age model. We have the best model of
learning that the 17th-century technology can provide,” he says. “But in
education, this is finally happening; 2013 is a year of a turning point
and really important initiatives like Coursera, edX (are) coming from
MIT.
“We’re finally starting to think
about building a 21st-century educational system. We need to move toward
a student-focused, collaborative, customized model.”
Tapscott is also busy working on his next book, to be called
Radical Openness.
Co-written with Anthony D. Williams, it looks at how institutions and
businesses can open up. And, Tapscott says, now that he’s created an app
he’ll never focus solely on the printed word again.
“I’m really serious about this. I’m
never going to just write a text book again. Every one of them is going
to come with an app, or some kind of deep, interactive learning
environment.”
