"Leadership in the Interactive Age" was one of significant accomplishments of my consulting career. It was a collaboration between my business partner, Donna Prestwood, our colleague, Barbara Benjamin, New York, and me. We met at least three times for a week at a time in New York and Maine discussing the issues, teasing out the basics and creating the concepts contained in this work. We interviewed over 60 people and placed clips of those interviews in the appropriate place in our structure.
For the actual production of the work, Barbara moved to Austin for about three months. The series consisted of 8 sessions each 1 hour and 50 minutes long. These were broadcast live over NTU's satellite network weekly in January and February 1995 from Oklahoma State's studios in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It was quite a grind to get everything ready in a week's time. Many very late hours.
NTU was a pioneer of distance learning using satellite TV.
I still believe that some of the concepts developed through this collaboration are still relevant today. Unfortunately we did not get national recognition for this work. To just name two. I think we were right in naming our times as the interactive age. Look around you or at yourself, how much time is spent interacting, sometimes without much to show for it? And, second, I think our focus on ingenuity was correct, rather than creativity or innovation.
This project was one of the most challenging, and creative endeavors I had as a consultant. And, I enjoyed it. I like working in the medium and the integration of interviews. It would have been nice to do several more of these, but it didn't work out that way.
Here's what I archived:
Leadership in the Interactive Age Brochure
Leadership in the Interactive Age Description
Video Programs
- Leadership and Technology: Is Your Mental Map Ready? Part 1 and Part 2
- Personal Ingenuity and Emerging Technologies Part 1 and Part 2
- Knowledge and the Ethics of Technology Part 1 and Part 2
- Integrating Technologies in the Age of Interaction Part 1 and Part 2
- Leading in the Age of Interactions Part 1 and Part 2
- Leadership is a State of Mind, Not a Position Part 1 and Part 2
- Leadership, Ingenuity and Technology: Accelerators of Innovation Part 1 and Part 2
- Organizations and Individuals Who Have Invented new Tools for New Times Part 1 and Part 2
National Technological University (NTU), Fort Collins, Colorado, was founded in 1984 as a non-profit organization offering graduate courses via satellite and leading to a Master of Science (M.S.) degree. It was a collaborative effort among many major engineering and management colleges in the United States to meet the graduate and continuing education needs of “engineers, technical professionals and managers using advanced educational and telecommunications technology.” Graduate and non-credit courses were sourced from a number of distinguished universities and were delivered through NTU to working technical professionals and managers at corporate and government sites across the United States and at international locations as well. NTU was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, The Higher Learning Commission.
"There is widespread recognition of the growing need for engineers and the organizations that employ them to create a new engineering culture that encourages lifelong learning....The National Technological University (NTU) is an important example. NTU delivers classes from major engineering schools by satellite to working professionals in industry. NTU and Motorola University...have been cited as U.S. 'best practices' in this field."
In 2002, NTU was sold to Sylvan Learning Systems and then folded into Walden University in 2004. Wikipedia
