In her October 25 blog, Linda Baer highlighted the transformative potential of collaborative intelligence (CI)—a synergy of artificial and human intelligence. She identified five key actions for planners to take now to maximize CI in their work:
• Understand the comprehensive impact of AI
• Leverage Collaborative Intelligence (CI), artificial and human intelligence
• Commit to upskilling and training
• Learn to evaluate and use AI
• Explore opportunities for transformative planning
Building on Baer’s foundation, we're introducing a five-part blog series exploring how CI might revolutionize planning and redefine the roles of planners over the next five years. We will capstone this blog series later in 2025 with follow-up scenarios portraying the dynamics and outcomes of planning in 2030.
From Experimentation to Transformation
Higher education is in the nascent stages of using generative AI (GenAI). Despite advancements in other sectors, adoption here is slow due to low AI literacy and skepticism. Constrained by limited experience, leadership often fails to envision CI's transformative potential.
While GenAI’s breakthrough applications are few and CIs are still emerging, experts predict the rise of autonomous agents and superintelligence within 3–5 years. These innovations could profoundly disrupt higher education’s planning dynamics.
Most institutions currently see GenAI as a tool for incremental change rather than revolutionary innovation. Few realize its potential to solve pressing challenges and capitalize on new opportunities, such as evolving global learning ecosystems and the growing need for lifelong upskilling.
Challenges in Higher Education
External Challenges
Declining enrollments and demographic shifts
Rising costs and student debt
Eroding public confidence in higher education
Growing competition from alternative providers
Transformations in global knowledge and work ecosystems; AI changes jobs massively and requires continuous upskilling.
Internal Challenges
Misaligned organizational cultures and leadership styles
Outdated planning tools and practices
Urgent need for scalable business models and revenue sources
These complex issues demand embedding CI into planning processes alongside cultural and leadership transformation.
Leveraging CI for Transformation
Institutions must embrace bold visions, innovative models, and faster, larger-scale collaborations to address these challenges. CI can be the driving force for:
Virtualized and data-driven planning processes
Enhanced environmental scanning and foresight analyses
Continuous scenario planning
Innovative solutions that have proven unreachable without CI
CI-enabled agents could become integral to planning, boosting foresight, decision-making, and execution speed. Platforms like Zoom and Miro can extend collaboration to include diverse stakeholders, fostering adaptability and innovation in a rapidly changing environment.
Evolving Roles of Planners
With CI integration, planners will assume new roles:
Process Co-Designers: Structuring CI-empowered planning frameworks.
Translator and Advocate: Serving as content experts and champions for GenAI and CI initiatives.
Facilitators: Guiding virtualized, collaborative planning sessions.
Transformation Architects: Championing CI across institutions and fostering adaptive decision-making cultures.
Five-Part Blog Series
This five-part series will explore how CI will reshape higher education planning, as the figure below shows.
Five Features that Will Change in CI-Powered Planning in Higher Education
Building the Enabling Resources for CI: New technology, talent, processes, and policies are needed for CI to succeed in higher education. This initial step will enable experimenting with AI, developing resources and talent, building and scaling pilot projects, and then making the leap from experimentation to transformation.
Transforming the Dynamics and Nature of CI-Powered Planning: Faster, future-focused, and continuous planning models will change the dynamics of planning and decision-making.
Enhancing Planning Outcomes, Achieving Breakthrough Solutions: Planning outcomes will also differ using CI. Higher education will accelerate decisions and craft innovative, breakthrough solutions never before possible.
Redefining Planners’ Roles: CI will empower new responsibilities and leaders to become transformation architects, co-designers of new planning experiences, facilitators of virtualized planning, and translators/champions of CI.
Reshaping Organizational Culture: For CI to work in higher education, as described in the first four elements of the figure, leaders, and planners must dramatically change the organizational culture. This will require continuous experimenting, learning, and demonstration of improved outcomes and value.
The insights from these blogs will culminate in scenarios that will portray planning transformations by 2030 across various institutional types, including research universities, regional public universities, private colleges, and community colleges. These scenarios will be presented later in 2025.
Conclusion
CI is poised to redefine higher education planning, making institutions more agile and innovative – and nurturing the capacity for out-of-the-box thinking. This series offers a roadmap to harness CI for impactful organizational transformation that exceeds current capabilities.
Full Blog Series:
Blog 3: Coming January 2025
Blog 4: Coming January 2025
Blog 5: Coming February 2025
Additional Resources
Charlotte Relyea, Dana Maor, and Sandra Durth, “GenAI’s Next Inflection Point: From Employee Experimentation to Organizational Transformation.” McKinsey & Company, 8/8/24
Amir Husain, “Disruption Machine: How AI Is Reshaping Economies and Empires,” Forbes/Innovation, 1.10.25.
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