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 CollegeOxford 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 werecruit-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.