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.