THREE BIG IDEAS
Recruit. Invest. Redesign.
The planets are aligning…
 New strategic plan
 Capital campaign directly tied to strategic plan
 Long tradition of real-world engagement
 Pressure to differentiate within our white-hot
marketplace and shrinking pool of prospective
students
Why differentiate?
 Serving up more of the same in a competitive
marketplace…
< Confuses our target audiences.
< Turns us into a “commodity.”
 In contrast, offering a distinctive experience…
< Lodges us clearly in the minds of choosers.
< Prompts prospective students, faculty, staff and
donors to judge us not by the cover, but the story
inside.
The strategic wellhead
for recruit-invest-redesign?
 Break down the barriers that limit traditional
universities from achieving the greatest and most
positive impact on our world.
 Create solutions for the most pressing challenges
facing our state, nation and world.
 Achieve a new level of greatness that will inspire
us and our partners to envision even bigger ideas
and apply real-world thinking even more broadly.
(mnsu.edu/strategicplan/)
Put another way…
“In the long run, you only hit what you aim at.
Therefore…you had better aim at something high.”
-- Henry Thoreau
How high?
 These three big ideas aim at producing this kind
of change for Minnesota State Mankato:
transformational, not incremental
 These ideas aim at the world – whether halfway
around the globe, or just down the street.
What’s culture got to do with it?
 Culture:
< The often-invisible daily-life assumptions of people in
a particular group – a way of life.
 Culture Take 2:
< The crucible where emotion and rationality are fused
in a particular way that profoundly affects thought,
action and change.
All Souls College
Oxford University
So how do we change culture?
Recruit. Invest. Redesign.
Why three ideas?
 Focus, focus, focus.
 The end date of this strategic plan: 2015
Why these ideas?
 What ideas, more than anything, can help us
achieve transformational change?
< Recruit: Who comes here?
< Invest: How do we spend our money?
< Redesign: What happens here?
What do we get if we
recruit-invest-redesign?
 A Minnesota State Mankato that is…
<
<
<
<
<
<
Bold
Full of big ideas
Distinctive
A leader
An engine of global solutions
And…
A “story inside” that no one else can tell.
THREE BIG IDEAS
Recruit. Invest. Redesign.