November 18, 2025 · Episode 286
Innovation in Higher Education: How Leaders Build the Capacity to Adapt with Insights from AFIT
34 Min · By Dr. Drumm McNaughton
AFIT illustrates innovation in higher education through foresight, cross-sector learning, and team-based planning that strengthen institutional strategy.
Innovation in higher education often breaks down long before it reaches implementation. Leaders see where the institution needs to go, but the structures beneath them move at a pace built for a different era. Teams struggle to make sense of unfamiliar challenges. Planning cycles are misaligned with the rate of external change. Initiatives stall because the institution lacks the shared practices, cross-functional coordination, and environmental intelligence necessary for action. These gaps are not caused by a lack of commitment. They are symptoms of organizations that were never designed to operate in today’s conditions.
This episode examines how colleges and universities can build the internal capacity required for innovation. The discussion draws on field examples from the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation (AFIT), where leaders from community colleges, technical colleges, and universities engage in structured, cross-sector learning that strengthens their ability to anticipate disruption, adapt strategies, and design better experiences for students. The insights are relevant to all institutions, regardless of size or sector, because they highlight the practical conditions leaders must create to support transformation.
Erika Liodice, Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation (AFIT), joins Dr. McNaughton in this conversation to surface lessons from institutions that have used futures thinking, cross-sector collaboration, and intentional team learning to strengthen their planning processes, instructional models, and student experience strategies. They highlight patterns that matter for presidents and boards: innovation gains traction when leadership structures are aligned, when teams share a common understanding of purpose, and when environmental scanning provides the actionable intelligence required to inform strategy.
Why Innovation in Higher Education Breaks Down
Innovation is often framed as creativity or vision, but the barriers leaders face are operational. Colleges struggle when new ideas collide with legacy structures. Processes are slow, decision authority is fragmented, and teams frequently operate with incomplete information about external forces reshaping the environment. Leaders may articulate an ambitious direction, yet departments interpret that direction through different assumptions and priorities. Efforts that begin with excitement lose momentum as the organization tries to translate aspiration into coordinated action.
The problem is not a lack of willingness. The problem is that innovation requires practices the institution has not historically developed: environmental scanning, foresight capabilities, cross-functional planning, disciplined experimentation, and collaborative execution. Without those capabilities, even strong ideas fail to gain traction.
This is the challenge AFIT members confront when they come together: how to build the organizational muscles needed to adapt. Their experiences illustrate that innovation depends on exposure to new mental models, opportunities to test ideas with peers, and structures that help teams interpret complex change.
Cross-Sector Learning Helps Institutions Rethink Their Assumptions
Higher education often attempts to solve its challenges internally, but the pace of change requires intelligence from beyond the sector. Institutions that adopt cross-sector practices learn to analyze problems differently, identify root causes more effectively, and design solutions informed by industries that have already solved similar challenges.
AFIT’s work is grounded in this belief. Leaders meet with organizations such as Disney, the Institute for the Future, Dreamscape Learn, Ritz-Carlton, Apple, and Southwest Airlines to examine how these companies design experiences, anticipate disruption, and build systems that support fast, coordinated action. These examples give presidents and their teams a starting point for reframing issues on their own campuses.
A powerful illustration is the application of foresight methodology. Through a partnership with the Institute for the Future, presidents and their teams learned how to strengthen their strategic planning through structured environmental scanning, scenario development, and long-range thinking. When Yavapai College applied these tools on campus, the process revealed an opportunity to launch the nation’s first optimized three-year bachelor’s degree. This was not the product of chance. It emerged because the institution had built the capacity to evaluate long-term trends, connect them to local workforce needs, and move quickly enough to seize the opportunity.
Cross-sector examples are valuable not because institutions should replicate them, but because they help leaders see the constraints they have internalized. Once those constraints are exposed, innovation becomes more actionable.
Innovation in Higher Education Requires Better Experience Design
One of the clearest patterns emerging from AFIT’s fieldwork is that institutions need to redesign the student experience with the same discipline other industries apply to customer experience. This insight came into focus through AFIT’s engagement with Disney, where leaders observed how every touchpoint in the guest journey is intentionally designed for clarity, flow, and emotional coherence.
On campus, the absence of this intentionality shows up in predictable ways: students lost during onboarding, misaligned advising interactions, unclear financial aid steps, and disconnected support services. When Western Iowa Tech applied lessons from Disney’s behind-the-scenes model, leaders identified that a lack of technology access was undermining student success. The institution launched a laptop initiative that removed a critical barrier and created a more equitable starting point for all learners.
This example demonstrates that innovation is often rooted in small structural changes informed by a deeper understanding of the student’s lived experience. Leaders who adopt a systems-level view are better positioned to redesign the student journey with clarity.
VR, AI, and Emerging Modalities Create New Opportunities for Academic Transformation
Innovation in higher education increasingly involves technology, but the critical insight from AFIT’s fieldwork is that technology adoption is most effective when tied to pedagogy and mission. At Dreamscape Learn, presidents and their teams experienced VR-based instructional design built through a collaboration between Arizona State University and DreamWorks co-founder Walter Parkes. The experience highlighted how immersive environments can strengthen comprehension, engagement, and problem-solving.
After participating, several institutions began exploring how VR could support specific programs or serve as a catalyst for broader instructional redesign. The adoption was not driven by novelty. It was driven by a clearer understanding of how emerging modalities can strengthen academic quality when implemented intentionally.
Artificial intelligence presents similar opportunities. AFIT’s AI community of practice gives leaders a place to analyze use cases together, from HR workflows to student services to data generation. Institutions are testing AI-powered advising support, early alerts, hiring process automation, and custom models that produce actionable institutional insights. These shared experiments help leaders identify appropriate boundaries, evaluate risks, and develop responsible practices.
The common thread is discipline. Technology becomes an innovation lever only when institutions connect it to strategy, pedagogy, and student outcomes.
Innovation Depends on Structures That Support Shared Problem-Solving
Institutions often underestimate the structural conditions required to support innovation. Leaders may communicate clear goals, but without mechanisms that bring teams together, align priorities, and build shared understanding, even the most compelling ideas lose momentum. Innovation is not a solo leadership act. It is a coordinated institutional practice.
AFIT’s approach reinforces this. Member institutions work through structured team learning, where presidents bring cross-functional groups to analyze issues together. Instead of splitting into separate tracks or returning to campus with fragmented takeaways, teams sit at the same table for the entire learning journey. They hear the same examples, interpret the same signals, and work through guided exercises that translate external insights into campus-specific action.
This structure matters. When teams learn together, they return to campus with a foundation that reduces resistance and misunderstanding. Innovation becomes less about persuading people to embrace a new idea and more about supporting a process the group already understands. It accelerates implementation because teams have built shared ownership.
Leaders who want to strengthen their innovation capacity can adopt a similar model by establishing cross-functional planning groups, embedding structured reflection into retreats or strategy sessions, and ensuring that new ideas move through team-based evaluation before being pushed into execution.
Planning Cycles Must Account for Environmental Scanning
Strategic planning processes need to evolve. Traditional planning models were built for environments that changed slowly. They assumed that institutions could forecast five years ahead with reasonable confidence. Today, leaders face accelerating shifts in technology, workforce demands, student expectations, funding pressure, and demographic patterns. This environment requires planning processes that incorporate continuous environmental scanning and structured foresight.
Institutions that integrate scanning into their planning cycles gain a more accurate picture of emerging risks and opportunities. They evaluate long-term demographic trends, political changes, employer needs, technological shifts, and cultural transitions. They use this intelligence to guide decisions about academic programs, enrollment strategy, operational models, and capital planning.
This approach strengthens institutional resilience. It also improves coordination between leadership teams and governing boards, because both groups are working from a shared understanding of external realities. When environmental scanning is built into the planning structure, trustees can engage in more informed oversight, and presidents can make more precise strategic decisions. This alignment is particularly important as institutions face pressure to act faster while managing more complex risks.
Innovation Grows in Communities, Not Silos
Higher education often treats innovation as isolated projects or initiatives. AFIT’s field examples show that innovation grows faster when institutions participate in communities where ideas can be tested, refined, and shared. This is not about forming large networks. It is about creating intentional spaces where leaders and practitioners exchange real experiences and learn from one another’s experiments.
Some leaders build networks within their local communities, meeting monthly with executives from healthcare, business, and public service to discuss what they are testing and what they are learning. Others form cross-institutional study groups or book clubs modeled after the earliest days of CQIN. These groups help leaders break out of institutional silos and gain fresh insights from people who are solving similar problems in different contexts.
These community-based structures strengthen innovation capacity because they bring new mental models into the institution. They expose leaders to alternative ways of working, sharpen their analysis, and reduce the isolation that often accompanies change leadership.
Presidents and boards who want to accelerate innovation should consider how to build these networks intentionally, whether inside their region or across states.
Innovation in Higher Education Requires Cultural Foundations
Culture determines whether innovation will take root. Leaders often emphasize strategy, structure, and process, but culture influences how teams respond to uncertainty, risk, and new ideas. Institutions that foster curiosity, psychological safety, and shared ownership are more likely to sustain innovation. Those teams that feel isolated or unsupported struggle to move beyond incremental improvement.
AFIT’s members emphasize the importance of cultivating a culture where experimentation is not equated with failure, and where collaboration across departments is expected. Leaders must model the behaviors they want to see, including openness to new perspectives, willingness to revise assumptions, and commitment to ongoing learning.
This cultural work is foundational. Without it, structural changes will not be enough. Institutions must create environments where teams feel trusted to raise ideas, explore possibilities, and challenge outdated practices. Culture becomes the soil in which innovation grows.
Moonshot Thinking Helps Institutions Shape Their Future
AFIT’s three moonshots illustrate how institutions can frame ambitious goals that create clarity, purpose, and forward momentum. Rather than focusing on short-term objectives, the moonshots establish directional targets that unify leaders across institutions and states.
The three moonshots focus on technology-driven operations, financial capacity, and human potential. These areas reflect the pressures institutions face and the opportunities available to them. While the moonshots are specific to AFIT’s work, they illustrate a broader principle: institutions need long-term aspirations that are large enough to inspire action yet flexible enough to accommodate different strategies.
Moonshot thinking helps institutions break out of short-term cycles and create the conditions for sustained transformation. It gives boards and leadership teams a way to align decisions around purpose rather than reactive problem-solving. This approach is particularly valuable as institutions navigate a landscape defined by volatility and rapid change.
Innovation Requires Leadership That Can Translate Insight Into Action
Innovation is not driven by ideas; it is driven by leaders who can interpret emerging conditions, align teams, and convert learning into coordinated action. Institutions struggle when leaders shoulder the responsibility for innovation alone. They succeed when leadership creates the frameworks that allow teams to consistently evaluate challenges, test solutions, and adjust practices.
The AFIT examples underscore this. Institutions that have made measurable progress in innovation are those where leaders have done three things well:
They built shared understanding.
Teams learned together, processed external examples together, and developed a shared language for discussing change.
They created structures that support disciplined experimentation.
Innovation became an organized practice, not an ad-hoc effort or a side project.
They integrated environmental scanning into strategy.
Planning processes were informed by continuous intelligence, not assumptions or past patterns.
Higher education cannot operate on linear decision cycles anymore. Institutions that treat innovation as episodic will fall behind. Those that build it into governance, planning, and operations will be better equipped to manage volatility and prepare students for an environment defined by uncertainty.
Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
- Treat innovation as a core leadership discipline, not an occasional initiative.
Innovation fails when institutions rely on episodic bursts of activity or charismatic leadership. It succeeds when leaders embed strategic planning and environmental scanning into regular decision cycles, create cross-functional structures for shared problem-solving, and ensure teams are equipped to respond to emerging conditions. - Strengthen institutional capacity through shared learning and coordinated execution.
Presidents and boards should ensure teams work from the same assumptions about risk, opportunity, and long-term direction. Structures such as cross-functional planning groups, structured team learning, and reflective practice help institutions move faster and reduce internal resistance. - Build long-term resilience by integrating environmental scanning into governance.
Boards and executive teams must evaluate demographic patterns, workforce needs, policy shifts, technological changes, and cultural trends as part of routine governance, not as periodic updates. Institutions that build scanning into their planning cycles make more informed decisions, adapt more quickly, and position themselves for sustainable growth.
Quick Overview
- Innovation initiatives often fail because institutions lack the shared practices, structures, and environmental intelligence needed to support coordinated action.
- AFIT’s fieldwork shows that cross-sector learning helps leaders identify new models for student experience, operations, instructional design, and long-term planning.
- Dreamscape Learn demonstrates how VR can strengthen pedagogy, while Disney’s guest-experience model highlights the need for intentional student experience design.
- Yavapai College used foresight methods to identify and implement the nation’s first optimized three-year bachelor’s degree.
- Institutions are experimenting with AI for hiring, student support, basic needs navigation, and data analysis through structured communities of practice.
- Innovation accelerates when teams learn together, process examples together, and collaborate on translating insights into implementation.
- Strategic planning and environmental scanning must be aligned to capture workforce trends, policy shifts, demographic patterns, and technology changes.
- Institutions benefit from creating intentional innovation networks within their local communities or across states.
- Culture remains the foundation of sustainable innovation, requiring trust, shared purpose, and openness to experimentation.
- Moonshot thinking helps institutions align long-term aspirations with practical strategies that advance technology, financial strength, and human potential.
- Governance must support innovation by clarifying decision rights, building shared environmental awareness, and strengthening alignment between presidents and boards.
About Our Podcast Guest
Erika Liodice is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation & Transformation (AFIT) — a collaborative community of 60 innovative college presidents and CEOs leading the radical renewal of higher education. In her role, Erika and her team design immersive learning experiences that help leaders experiment with emerging technologies, reimagine institutional models, and tackle higher ed’s most pressing challenges. She is passionate about awakening the “inner innovator” in people and equipping them with the courage and creativity to transform the world around them.
Connect with Erika Liodice on LinkedIn →
About the Host
Dr. Drumm McNaughton is the founder, CEO, and Principal Consultant at The Change Leader, Inc. A highly sought-after higher education consultant with 20+ years of experience, Dr. McNaughton works with leadership, management, and boards of U.S. and international institutions. His expertise spans key areas, including accreditation, governance, strategic planning, presidential onboarding, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. Dr. McNaughton’s approach combines a holistic methodology with a deep understanding of the contemporary and evolving challenges facing higher education institutions worldwide to ensure his clients succeed in their mission.
Connect with Drumm McNaughton on LinkedIn→
Read the Podcast Transcript →
Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 286– with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Erika Liodice
Introduction to Changing Higher Ed®
Welcome to Changing Higher Ed®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.
[00:00:31] Introduction and Guest Welcome
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Erica Liodice, Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation. AFIT is a national nonprofit association, and empowers higher education leaders to transform their organizations. AFIT connects college presidents with leaders from sectors beyond higher ed to create strategic collaborations, introduce new models, and pursue emerging best practices.
Erica has a very non-traditional higher ed background, and this, plus her hands-on work with dozens of presidents and chancellors, provides her with a deep and timely perspective on how colleges are evolving and how their presidents are successfully driving these changes. She joins me today to talk about innovation, the AFIT way, and what colleges and universities can do to build their innovation muscle.
Erica, welcome to the program.
Erika Liodice: Hi Drumm. Thanks so much for having me.
Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. I’m looking forward to a great conversation about innovation. You are the head of an organization called AFIT, which is the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation. You guys are doing some incredible work around innovation. In fact, you’re going to be out in my neck of the woods here shortly to scout out your next conference. But before we get into all that fun stuff, tell the audience just a little bit about who you are.
[00:01:59] Erica Liodice’s Background
Erika Liodice: Well, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, but I never really expected my path to lead me to higher education. It’s really been a journey of chance, connections and unexpected opportunities, if you will. So I graduated from Lehigh University back in 2003, and that was very much a post 9/11 job market. And all the recruiters that were coming to college at that time were looking for finance majors, and I happened to be a marketing major. And so I didn’t really know what industry I wanted to land in, I just knew that I wanted a job that I felt passionate about. And I was very fortunate. I was recruited by one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world to join their sales force. And through that experience I learned the art of selling. And that is something that has supported me and been useful throughout my career and in my personal life as well. From there I joined a tech startup that was focused on creating virtual reality training, experiences for pharmaceutical companies. And through that I actually discovered my love of innovation.
From there, I worked at an advertising agency where I got to help some of the world’s most famous brands tell their story. Which was a great masterclass in the art of effective communication. Through all of those experiences, I still hadn’t found that passion that I was looking for as a new graduate.
So in 2011, I decided to go out on my own, and I started a marketing consultancy.
[00:03:35] Journey to AFIT
Erika Liodice: Which led me to work with a company called Campus Works. And they are an incredible technology consulting firm serving higher education. And when I joined Campus Works, I learned that they were members of an association called the Continuous Quality Improvement Network, CQIN (Organization no longer exists). And CQIN, at that time, was looking for marketing support, so I started working in a marketing capacity for CQIN. And over the years, I really just fell in love with the work that CQIN was doing and its members. And in 2018, they moved from focusing on continuous quality improvement practices to focusing on innovation and transformation.
That group then became AFIT, the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation. And in 2021, their executive director decided to retire and I threw my hat into the ring for the position, and was honored to be chosen for that position. And that’s how I landed in the role that I am in today, which is the executive director of AFIT. And I’m proud to report that I finally found that passion that I was looking for all those years ago as a new graduate entering the working world.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s a neat story. Thank you. I’m really curious, you know, higher ed is so much a different beast. You’ve got tremendous outside experience. And one of the things that, that we’re seeing in higher ed right now is there are more folks with experience from industry coming into higher ed, at senior leadership levels, as well as other levels as well. How has your experience outside helped you in understanding higher ed and more importantly, how higher ed needs to innovate?
[00:05:22] AFIT’s Mission and Vision
Erika Liodice: My diverse background was a really great match for the work that we do at AFIT. Because at AFIT we are focused on bringing in thought leaders from all different industry. Because we believe that innovation happens at intersections. Right? When higher, ed learns from other sectors, we see new possibilities for how we can serve students and our communities.
If I may give you an example of that, last year we partnered with Institute for the Future. They’re the world’s oldest, continuously running futures research and educational organization out of Palo Alto, California. And they taught our members how to build a foresight practice so that they can sense change, be prepared for systemic shocks and disruptions, and really be ready to adapt to the different change that’s coming down the pike. And one of our members, Dr. Lisa Rhine, she and her team at Yavapi College in Prescott, Arizona, returned to campus and used that foresight training to build their own foresight practice.
And what that led them to do was to spot an opportunity to become the first community college in the country to offer an optimized three year bachelor’s degree. And that offering has become a game changer, not only for the college, but for its students and for employers in the community. And so you can see there just how important it is to look outside of the world we know to draw inspiration. Because so much is possible when you look to places that you might not necessarily think of, or you might not necessarily be familiar with. It can be a real game changer.
[00:07:02] Innovation in Higher Education
Drumm McNaughton: When we do strategic planning with institutions, we do a similar process. We call it future environmental scanning. Which it’s looking at trends across multiple areas, technology, innovation, industry, socio-demographics, et cetera. And project out five to 10 years, what we think the trends are going to be.
I followed hockey for years, or football or whatever, and you don’t shoot the hockey puck to where the player currently is. You shoot it to where the player is going to be. Same thing in football. If you’re throwing a pass, you don’t throw it to where the receiver is. You throw where the receiver’s going to be.
Doing strategy, you have to do the same thing because you can’t do strategy for where you are right now.
[00:07:49] Strategic Planning and Future Scanning
Drumm McNaughton: You’ve got to do it to where you want to go, and what your environment is going to be.
Erika Liodice: Absolutely. And that work is becoming harder and harder because, two things are happening at the same time. One is the pace of change is increasing. Really, this is going to be the slowest change we’ll ever be. We’re only going to see it increase from here.
[00:08:08] Challenges in Higher Education
Erika Liodice: The other thing that’s happening is the convergence of all these different challenges and crises. Our members are dealing with AI and the impact and implications it’s having in education. As well as workforce disruption and shifting demographics with the demographic cliff.
And so, what that means for them is, it’s no longer enough to simply evolve or to just focus on incremental improvement. They are seeing that, really, innovation is the way to stay relevant. And, you know, that’s great for AFIT because that’s our focus.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes, your focus is innovation and transformation. Tell us a bit about AFIT, if you would.
Erika Liodice: Absolutely.
[00:08:51] AFIT’s History and Evolution
Erika Liodice: So, as I alluded to earlier, we were founded originally as the Continuous Quality improvement Network, CQIN was our acronym back in 1991. And five community college presidents came together at that time, and they were reading books. These were community college president leaders. They were reading books by the great business minds of the time, like Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, and others. And they would share the things that they were learning and try to employ those concepts at their colleges. And one day they said, why don’t we formalize this into an actual learning community?
And that was really the birth of CQIN. And so for many, many years, CQIN focused on teaching its members continuous quality improvement practices focused on achieving organizational excellence. Somewhere around 2018, those CQIN members and the board decided that continuous quality pro improvement simply wasn’t enough to rise to the urgent challenges facing higher education.
They felt that they really needed to focus on rapid improvement and bigger ideas to address the disruptive challenges facing higher ed. So at that point, they shifted their focus to innovation and transformation. We changed our name to AFIT, the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation, and today we are a collaborative community of 60 community college and technical college and university presidents and higher education CEOs. And we’re leading the radical renewal of higher education. And we do that, in large part, by learning from thought leaders outside of higher ed to inspire innovation within higher ed and also building a safe community for innovation, experimentation, and cross collaborative learning.
Drumm McNaughton: So you are looking at and bringing in outside experts on particular areas, cross pollination.
[00:10:51] Learning from Industry Leaders
Erika Liodice: That’s right.
Drumm McNaughton: To me that’s worth repeating. Not three times, but just twice. So–
Erika Liodice: I could give you a couple examples of what that’s looked like over the years.
[00:11:01] Disney’s Influence on Student Experience
Erika Liodice: When I’ve talked with some of our members who have been in the membership for a long time, one of the favorite learning partners that we had many years ago, was Disney.
And I think we’re all familiar with Disney, right? And what you may not know about Disney is when you go behind the scenes of the Disney parks, a lot of thought and care and attention goes into carefully curating the guest experience. So as you move through the park, it’s very much designed for visitors to feel and do certain things as they move through the park. And so our members were able to draw inspiration from that model, to think about how they can carefully curate their student experiences on campus. One of our members, Dr. Terry Murrell from Western Iowa Technical Community College, he identified a really cool opportunity back on his campus after going through this Disney experience. He identified that there was a gap in access to laptops among his students. And so he and his team decided to develop a program where they could offer free laptops to all students, thereby leveling the playing field and ensuring equitable access to technology to support their success.
So that’s just one of the many rich examples that have come out of our learning design.
Drumm McNaughton: Yes. And going to events like what you put on, you’re getting folks to think, I hate this term, but I’m going to use it anyway, outside the box. How can some of the innovations, the lessons that industry has done, how can we apply them here? And at first blush, you would think the example you just gave, you know, about the student experience, how would the Disney experience that? But when you focus it on what is your student experience, and how many times do you have or do institutions have students, they walk in for the first time, they go through orientation, whatever, they’re still lost. Because they don’t understand how financial aid and student advising work together, or admissions, how all these things work together behind the scenes.
So being able to put yourself, the old saying goes, you don’t know me until you’ve walked a mile in my moccasins. It’s the same thing, until you look at it from the student perspective. Is it really innovation?
Erika Liodice: Absolutely. And what we are focused on doing is exposing our members to all kinds of innovative models and next practices. So that way they can think about how to translate those concepts to their institutions. Whether it’s to create a better student experience or to build stronger relationships with the employers in their communities. I’ll give you a couple examples of some really cool stuff that we’ve done.
[00:14:05] VR and AI in Education
Erika Liodice: Last year we took our members on an innovation field trip to Dreamscape Learn. Are you familiar with Dreamscape Learn?
Drumm McNaughton: Oh Yes.
Erika Liodice: Okay, perfect. So for those listeners who may not be, that is created in partnership between Arizona State University President Michael Crow and Dreamworks, the movie company, Dreamworks co-founder Walter Parks. And what they’ve done is they’ve brought cinematic storytelling to educational pedagogy.
And so what we did was we brought our members to Dreamscape Learn, put them in VR headsets, and allowed them to attend a biology class, one of ASU’s biology classes, in virtual reality. And our members were so moved by that experience that many of them went back and started looking at how they could implement VR into their curriculum.
So that’s just one way that they are, again, looking at the different innovation that’s happening and thinking about how can we use this to enhance teaching and learning. Of course, so much is happening in the space of AI. One of the things that we’ve done this year is we’ve created an AI community of practice where our members can come together once a month and share the tools that they’re trying, the experiments that they’re running, and we’re seeing all really cool use cases. Everything from institutions that are experimenting with implementing AI into the HR and hiring process, to using it for student services, to connect students with, tutoring support, and other basic needs support. And, folks are even building custom AI platforms to generate faster actionable data. There’s all kinds of cool work going on, and so that’s part of that cross pollination of learning that we talked about just a minute ago. We come together as a community to share what’s working, what we’re trying and learn together so we can move forward together faster.
Drumm McNaughton: And when you get the right kind of people in the room, and people who want to in innovate, people who are open to innovation and new ideas, great things can come.
Erika Liodice: Absolutely, and I mean with all the different people I’ve worked with over the years, I just find that educators have a heart of gold. And if you want to take a look at how we can use AI for good, our members are doing that work in spades. Looking for how they can use AI to lift up their students to make their operations more efficient and effective. All of which is to, of course, serve their missions, which serves the greater good.
[00:16:45] Creating a Culture of Innovation
Drumm McNaughton: Innovation doesn’t happen in a silo. It has to happen with cross pollination, whether it be different industries, different people, whatever.
[00:16:54] AFIT’s Collaborative Approach
Drumm McNaughton: What do you do at AFIT to create that in environment of innovation for your president members?
Erika Liodice: Yes, so we have a couple of ways that we do that. The first is we have monthly CEO networking sessions. Where we create a safe candid space for our members to have conversations where they can really lean on each other to navigate the challenges of the day. So having that kind of private, CEO only, peer-to-peer learning space has been really valuable for them as they navigate these different unprecedented challenges that are coming their way.
[00:17:34] Summer Institute and Team Learning
Erika Liodice: The big thing that we do is at our summer institute, we employ a team learning approach. So, unlike most conferences, where if you go with a team, you’re learning in different tracks and you’re going in different directions. At our summer institute, our member CEOs hand-selected a team of people to come with them. They’re seated at a team table and for two and a half days, they go on a learning journey together. And we build dedicated team time into that learning experience so those teams can hit pause, digest what they’re hearing and learning, and then actually translate those concepts into an action plan that they can take with them back to campus.
And in that way, it becomes a really actionable learning experience. And it supports change management and transition management because you’ve had all the right people at the table participating in these conversations. So when they get back to campus, it’s not just one person’s big idea, it’s something that the team has incubated together and then is ready to take the next step once they get back to campus.
Drumm McNaughton: That makes so much sense. Years ago, when I would do strategic planning workshops, not with just individual colleges, but multiple people, we would suggest bringing three or four people who are intimately involved with the strategic planning process at their campus. And as we’d go through the various stages and steps in the planning process, they would have, we go through an hour’s work and then they’d have half an hour of an hour to put that into place or put that plan into place for themselves.
And we found that the folks who did this and really applied themselves, came out with the foundation work that they needed for an overall strategic plan in really great ways.
Erika Liodice: Yes, more and more I’m just becoming such a believer that collaboration, especially innovative collaboration, is the key to success moving forward. Change can feel isolating when you’re the one leading it. But when leaders see others tackling those same challenges and they have others involved in tackling those challenges and innovating, it brings a whole new energy and perspective to the table. And that, I think, is what makes the AFIT community so special and so powerful, is that we create a safe space for innovation and transformation.
Drumm McNaughton: You’ve got to create a shared vision for the change and there’s got to be an urgency for change. But then there’s got to be a shared vision around where that change is. And shared vision doesn’t mean it’s one person’s vision, it means everyone, it’s their vision and they’ve bought into it. That’s critical in getting these folks together like you’re doing.
You’ve got other meetings, you’ve got a February design conference coming up here in the near future.
[00:20:34] CEO Forum and Reps Meeting
Erika Liodice: We do, and that is one that’s actually one of my favorite events of the year. We call it our CEO Forum and Reps meeting. And that is a one-and-a-half-day conference. We are coming out to Albuquerque, to our friends at Central New Mexico Community College in February 2026 for that event. And what we do at that conference is give our member CEOs, and one or two people from their organizations, a chance to meet our learning partners and preview the learning design for the year.
And what that event does is it allows them to provide feedback on what they’re seeing and hearing and learning and participate in a dialogue with us. So they become co-creators of the Summer Institute learning experience. I personally have never been to a conference that has asked me to co-create the conference experience. And what’s really nice about this model is that it ensures that our Summer Institute learning is really tightly aligned with our members’ needs. And it gives them an opportunity to preview what they’re going to be doing and learning at Summer Institute, which informs the team members that they select to bring with them. So it all adds to really creating a very rich learning experience at our summer institute.
Drumm McNaughton: That’s fabulous.
[00:21:59] Expanding Innovation Beyond AFIT
Drumm McNaughton: Now, of course, my mind is going to, you limit your membership, or you’ve got the ideal membership at about 60 right now and it’s only exclusively for community colleges and technical college. What about someone who’s not an AFIT member? Whether they’re community college, whether a four year, whether they’re comprehensive, how do, what do they do to innovate? Because there’s no formal structure set up for that.
Erika Liodice: That’s a great question. I do want to just address one thing, which is that we’re not only limited to community and technical colleges. Our members can come from any segment of higher education. It just so happens, I think because we were founded by community college presidents, we very much have the community college spirit within our membership.
So most of our members are community and technical college presidents. We do have a member who’s a chancellor of a four-year polytechnic university. We have a couple of CEOs who lead nonprofit organizations in higher ed. And we have six CEOs who lead corporations in higher ed. So just to give you a sense of our mix and to clarify.
For those who are not members and wondering how they can advance their own innovation practices.
[00:23:16] Building Innovation Structures
Erika Liodice: I would encourage you to draw inspiration from our model, which is to learn from thought leaders and organizations outside of your industry. Over the years we have looked to world class organizations like Ritz-Carlton and Apple and Amazon and Southwest Airlines and Kimberly Clark Healthcare and many, many others, to learn about different topics and concepts. And then of course, thinking about how you can take what those organizations have done really, really well and apply it to the work that you’re doing at your institution. One other thing that I would encourage folks to think about, is how to make innovation more accessible at your organization. And what I mean by that is thinking about how to pull everybody in to the innovation process, not restricting innovation as a C-suite only activity. One AFIT member that does that really well is Chancellor Katherine Frank and her team at the University of Wisconsin Stout.
What they’ve done is they’ve started a program called LEAPP, and that’s Leading Educational Advancement through Polytechnic Pathways. And what they’ve done, and this was actually inspired by AFITs 2023 learning partner, Larry Keeley, who’s an innovation scientist. They drew inspiration from Larry’s model and they created a space to make innovation accessible to their entire community, from faculty to staff. Everyone at the college and in the community is welcome to bring forward ideas to improve the student experience to further their mission, and many of those ideas end up getting funded and turned into real pilot projects. And the reason I bring that up is because when everyone sees themselves as an innovator, transformation becomes part of the culture and not just the leader’s job. And I think that’s a great mindset to have as we move forward.
Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. You’ve got a structure that you built around AFIT, but most colleges are out there by themselves. What do you recommend for individual colleges and universities, how do you build that structure, that group of people or group of colleges, to be able to do this with? Or is that just kind of a fool’s errand?
[00:25:49] Community Collaboration for Innovation
Erika Liodice: Well, you know, I would encourage you to think about, even moving beyond just colleges, but think about the other stakeholders in your community. I was just talking with a member yesterday who shares that once a month, he meets with other leaders from other organizations in his community, and they all talk about the different innovative experiments that they’re running, things that they’re trying. And because they’ve all got different worldviews, because they’re in different segments, it’s a really rich source of inspiration for him as a college leader. And he, this person, he’s not currently a member, he’s interested in membership. But, that was an example of somebody, how he’s built his own creative solution for innovation right in his backyard.
Drumm McNaughton: And I see that at multiple colleges they have advisory boards, but they don’t typically use advisory boards in this manner. What you’re suggesting is more like a Vistage group where you have different people coming in from different industries. No one’s in competition with one another. They’re all working to improve their own institution. And they have guest speakers come in, it could be around innovation, it could be around multiple other things. So I think that’s a good way of doing it.
Erika Liodice: That’s a fabulous analogy. And, drawing inspiration back to 1991 from the five community college presidents that started this, it doesn’t even have to be colleges in your own state. It can be colleges in different states, find those people who have that same kindred spirit of innovation and wanting to change and wanting to create a better future. Find those people, and whether they’re in your community or in your state or not, and whether it’s starting a book club like our founding, presidents did, or, having a Vistage style mastermind call once a month, there are ample ways to foster that level of innovation in a community setting of your own creation.
Drumm McNaughton: This has been a fascinating conversation., Before we get to our takeaways question, because we always do that, what else can you tell us about how institutions, their leaders, can innovate?
Erika Liodice: Sure.
[00:28:10] AFIT’s Three Moonshots
Erika Liodice: So one of the things that I’m really excited about that we are focused on at AFIT is our three moonshots. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you about that and share the direction that we are heading in for the future.
So last year we set out to update our strategic plan. And through that process, and in conversation with our members, we realized that higher ed and our members don’t need another five-year plan. What they needed was a shared sense of purpose and something aspirational enough to unite leaders across systems and across states. And so what we did was we drew inspiration from a book called Exponential Organizations 2.0. And we decided to, instead of, updating our mission and our vision, we decided to adopt a massive transformative purpose supported by three ambitious moonshots.
So our massive transformative purpose is that we are a collaborative community of innovators leading the radical renewal of higher education. And our moonshots are, the first one is to transform AFIT member organizations into technology driven powerhouses. The second one is to propel AFIT member organizations toward financial prosperity. And the third is to cultivate member organizations as incubators of human potential.
All three of those focal areas came from the needs of our members. So what we’re seeing is that our massive transformative purpose and these moonshots have become fuel for innovation within our community. It goes right back to what you were saying, Drumm, about the work that you do to help your clients with strategic planning. I think what presidents can think about is how to build innovation into their culture, and a lot of that work can start with the strategic plan.
Drumm McNaughton: Mm-hmm, very true.
[00:30:04] Three Takeaways for University Presidents and Boards
Drumm McNaughton: Well, Erica, this has been fascinating. I want to thank you for your time today, as we always do.
Three takeaways for university presidents and boards. How can they better develop their innovation muscle?
Erika Liodice: Sure. Okay, so
- first I would say, think of innovation as a leadership imperative, not a luxury. We’re seeing that it doesn’t feel like the pace of change is going to slow down. So I don’t think leaders can afford to wait for more stable times to innovate. I think you need to build innovation into your strategy, into your culture, into your daily conversations. And I think that’s how institutions are going to stay relevant and resilient.
- The second thing I would offer is that, culture is really the foundation of transformation. We’ve seen time and time again, and we’ve talked about this a little bit in this conversation, that change sticks when people feel trusted, empowered, and connected to purpose. So I would encourage folks to invest in their people, to create psychological safety, reward curiosity, and make space for experimentation. Because what I’ve seen is that culture is where transformation either takes root or dies.
- And then the third thing I would encourage is to think big and don’t go it alone. Today’s challenges are just too complex for any one institution or one person to solve in isolation. So, collaborate. Collaborate, whether it’s across sectors, across institutions, share what works. Pursue your moonshots together. That’s how we’ll create radical renewal that higher education needs.
What’s next for Erika and AFIT
Drumm McNaughton: Great suggestions. Thank you. Great takeaways. What’s next for you?
Erika Liodice: Gosh, let’s see. Personally, I’m personally passionate about telling the stories of courageous, innovative leaders who are building a better future. So I recently launched a national storytelling project on LinkedIn called “The Road to Innovation“. Where I’m shining a spotlight on bold ideas and unexpected breakthroughs happening across the country.
So if you and your listeners are interested in following along, you can subscribe to my newsletter, The Road to Innovation, on LinkedIn. And then of course for AFIT, we’re focused on advancing those moonshots that I just talked about and continuing to create spaces where leaders can learn, experiment, and grow together.
Because as I mentioned before, we believe that innovation and transformation doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in community.
Drumm McNaughton: Great. Well, Erica, thanks again for being on the program. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I love meeting innovators. They just keep me excited every day, so thank you.
Erika Liodice: Thanks for having me, Drumm. I appreciate the conversation.
Drumm McNaughton: Take care. Thanks again.
Thanks for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Erica Liodice, Executive Director for the Alliance for Innovation and Transformation. Erica, thanks so much for being on the show, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to the next time our paths cross. To my listeners, thanks again for tuning in.
See you next week.
