Visiting Butler: Sparking a Culture of Innovation

Relevant Links

Butler University’s Transformation Lab website.

Chapters

0:00 - Why We Wanted to Visit Butler University

3:46 - What Butler’s President Said He Would Do When He First Started

7:22 - Some Early Wins In Sparking Innovation

9:16 - The Importance of Time and Patience in College Leadership

13:25 - How Presidents Can Best Work With Trustees to Encourage Innovation

15:46 - How a Business Background Influenced Leading a University

19:37 - Why Did Butler Push for Innovation?

21:11 - Putting a Vision Into Practice

22:50 - The Importance of Wanting to Win

28:01 - A Chief Strategy Officer’s Viewpoint

35:35 - A Faculty Perspective on Innovation

37:04 - The 50-50 Rule of Running the Board of Trustees

38:53 - What Butler Ventures Looks Like Today

47:43 - What Grade Would Butler Give Its Innovation Efforts?

52:00 - Closing Observations

Transcript

Jeff Selingo

Hey, Michael. We got to take the campus tour to Butler University recently.

Michael Horn

And as we head into this episode and what everyone's about to hear from two really interesting conversations, we wanted to give listeners first just a very quick bit of ‘Why’ for this episode and ‘Why  Butler.’ 

We were excited to have them sponsor and bring us to their campus, which we recorded on September 26. And I say that because there are a few dated references that appear throughout it. 

But just to lay it out, Jeff, we were both interested in a president who has had a tenure moving into the decade and a half mark and came in with an inaugural address that was super clear on some priorities for changes and strategy that they wanted to do at a time when they're launching a new strategy actually at Butler now. 

And it goes to a theme, I think, Jeff, that we've sort of picked up on as we've gone through these episodes with each other over time over the over the course of a decade doing Future U together almost, where we've seen that presidents, to create real meaningful change, you need to be there for a while — and change is measured really once you get past that decade mark. 

But number two, it seems having priorities that are really spelled out clearly for people and so that the campus understands where you're going, why, how it fits into their mission, how it fits into who they are — is really critical. We've both noted Michael Crow, Rick Levin, folks we've had on, their opening speeches were really revealing about where they intended to go, and in some ways gave them license to do so. You see the same pattern here at Butler. 

But you've noted there's more to it than just that.

Jeff Selingo

Yes. And you're gonna hear from Butler's president, Jim Denko, in just a few minutes about that, right, where he did lay this out. 

But you could also lay it out in a different way. And there was another guest we had on Future U a couple of years ago, Jason Wingard, former president of Temple who lasted, what, less than two years, I think. And if we all recall, we actually had a clip from his inaugural address on Future U. And he laid out a vision that the body essentially rejected that organ of his vision at Temple. And that's one of the reasons why he didn't last. 

And so I think a lot of this is about not only laying out that vision, but to make sure that vision is aligned. It doesn't have to be perfectly aligned. But aligned with the mission and margin of that university.

Michael Horn

And so that's a great place to set up a fascinating conversation. 

We hope you enjoy this campus tour stop at Butler University. 

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Michael Horn

Alrighty. Welcome, everyone. It's so good to be in Indianapolis with all of you, and a huge thank you to Butler University for hosting us today. 

And we are incredibly lucky, President Danko, Jim, if we may, to have a conversation that will be focused on the future. But to start that out, I want to go back to the past. 

Namely, 2011, you come in as president and you have this inaugural address, the theme of which was "imagine the possibilities." In it you announced a $5 million idea fund, and you focused a lot on innovation which we're going to get more into as we go throughout. But more broadly, you laid out a specific vision for where Butler would go under your leadership. 

And just set the context of the big areas, the moment in time when you came in, just to ground us in that time at Butler, so we can start to put in perspective all that you've done.

Jim Danko

Yeah. Well, thank you, Michael and Jeff, for being here today. We're honored by your presence, and thanks for putting some focus on Butler. We're very proud of what has happened here. 

You know, you gotta go back to 2011 and understand the context, and this was a very special moment in time and very unique, something I don't think too many universities could claim. 

In 2010, 2011, the Butler basketball team was in the championship game of the NCAA tournament. Right? I mean, I can't tell you the number of universities that wanna mimic that playbook, and it's just really hard to do. So this is the David/Goliath story, and I'm kinda coming in on the heels of that. In fact, when I was being interviewed in 2011, my first interview was when they made the Sweet 16 and I'm thinking, do I want them to win? Because if they go all the way, they're gonna want another president that has a higher profile.

But really if you talk about vision, strategy, leadership, you just have to even dial Butler back to the late ‘80seighties. President Jeff Bannister at the time decided to go down that path. And it's not an easy path, you know. Hired Barry Collier, did a great job of being the architect of the basketball program. And then this guy by the name of Brad Stevens, another lightning in the bottle moment, joins Butler and just one of the best coaches of all history, quite frankly, and did a great job. And Butler, like it tends to do, punched above its weight, and I'm coming in at that time. So that's the context. Right? 

And a little bit of me too coming from Villanova, I knew what it meant back then because in '85, that's all they talked about is when they beat Georgetown, and that was a moment for Villanova. But it was a much different era in 2011 versus '85. I don't think universities weren't thinking about marketing and branding and we could use this to leverage rankings and all of that. 

But we had to think about it that way. And so as I come into that with my experience at other great universities like Michigan and Villanova and so forth. I had to either leverage that moment or fail. And that's really how I sold myself, I think, to the trustees at the time. 

And of course you fall back on what you're used to, what you've learned from 40 years of management and leadership for myself going into that. You go to that toolbox of we've gotta move fast, we've gotta change, we've gotta think differently than other universities. 

The context of higher ed, I think really, your book kind of points it out. It's amazing the things that have happened differently even from the year 2000. You had to move forward or you're gonna die. It's kinda like the shark. Right? I'm not a marine biologist like George Costanza, but I think that's an apt metaphor, if it's true, that if you don't move forward, you're gonna die. 

So that's the context of 2011.

Michael Horn

And you outline a bunch of principles around academic mission, diversity, being reflective of the larger world — a bunch of these things. Talk to us about the big priorities and the progress you all have made. You all in the audience know, but I think our listeners may not know all of the things that Butler has done and launched since 2011.

Jim Danko

Well, it very much was an undergrad residential university. That was where the money was coming, the tuition, the focus, all the faculty were built for that and did an incredible job. Butler was excellent at that. Small classes, intimate education, all the things that you'd want. 

But the world was changing, and we had to expand the number of programs that we had. We had to move. We had zero courses online. And so to me, that was opportunity. 

And I also knew from other places — you know, Dartmouth and Villanova — they were reluctant. Universities in general are reluctant to make change. So the competitive advantage is the ability to convince a place, ‘We've gotta get ahead. We've gotta break out from the pack. We've gotta have the courage to change.’ 

And one of the early things was to try to convince the faculty and the academic side, ‘It's okay to try some online education.’ 

There was actually safe space, and that was when students would go away for the summer, they could take courses, you know, back in their hometowns, and it would transfer into Butler. And we put the idea out there. Well, why don't we own that? Let's put some things online. And I had a $1 million-dollar gift that was not designated. I designated it to fuel our online education, to let faculty have some development dollars. And son of a gun, if we didn't suddenly have some 20 to 25 courses online in the summer. That just sparked people's recognition that, 'Hey, this isn't so bad. We could do this.' So that's just one of many examples. 

The innovation fund fueled a whole bunch of ideas as well. Some worked, some didn't. But it just put into the bloodstream that change is a good thing.

Jeff Selingo

So Jim, one of the interesting undercurrents there as you go back to history in 2010 and 2011 is something that Michael and I have noticed is just time and the tenure of presidents, which we know is becoming much shorter. And that the ingredients we feel of the presidents and the institutions that we talk often about on the podcast is how long their presidents have been in their tenure. Whether it's 10 years, 15 years, we had a president a couple of years ago who had a 30-year tenure. There's just so much more that you can do in that time. 

So I want to drill a little bit into the how you've been able to do that — how you've been able to get the campus kind of rowing in the same direction, so to speak. I assume it wasn't as simple as outlining this vision, which you just talked about and kind of hitting play and just letting it go. 

You know, what have been the key ingredients for our listeners in getting the faculty and staff to buy in, to focus and stay committed toward working towards that vision over the years? 

Because when we talk to presidents, that's the hardest thing. They might have a vision, but they just don't know how to get people to come along. And they often don't have the patience. You seem to have some patience. Patience to let it play out a little bit. 

So talk a little bit about the ‘how this has happened’ over that time, the 14 years.

Jim Danko

Well, certainly tenure is important. I mean the one thing that I found, and I committed to coming in, was this is where I'm gonna succeed. This is where I'm gonna be the president, and I'm gonna stay. 

I've also had good mentors over time that have made the point that you can't just lay a vision out there and then disappear. You gotta be willing to commit. I used to think it was five years. I think it's 10 years. And now that I'm here for my fifteenth. Now I think 15 years is right. But you have to sustain. You have to be tenacious. You have to be committed. So if people see that, that you're committed, that you're not... I think because I've had some other moves in my career, there might be a little tendency of thinking, he's just gonna leverage this for the next thing. But I never felt that way, and I think people see that authenticity. So you have to have a sustainable leadership at the top. 

The other thing that is really important and we needed to do, was I remember people talking about, you know, some of the leadership across campus was, 'Hey, these are a lot of nice people, but dot dot dot.' That was how the trustees presented it. And a lot of positions had to be changed, and you had to move relatively quickly on that. And we have. And so I believe strongly in hiring great people. Work hard at it. 

You know, I have a thing about ‘hire slowly, fire quickly.’ Right? So hire slowly, get the right people, don't sell yourself short, then empower them. Set them free.

We have an amazing leadership team at Butler. I think it's one of these things that stands out. So it's not just the president, but it's something that starts at the top, and you surround yourself with those good people. And you support them and empower them. You don't second-guess. You make the financial investments. 

And yes, there were a segment of faculty. That's true everywhere. 15% of them are gonna always push back and resist. But you don't play to that audience. You play to the ones over here. And believe me, there were a lot of faculty here that were ready for change. Right? And so we were in a place that was ready for change. 

Another thing I firmly believe in my career, I've seen it. You know, when you're myself, I started a business when I was 19, and people say, 'Wow, you're really you're entrepreneurial.' You're the and you start to believe what people tell you sometimes. Right? There's a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I actually do believe and I found that in my management career. If I told somebody, 'Wow, that was a really creative thing.' I think that works organizationally too, believe it or not. When you keep saying, 'We're gonna be innovative. You're innovative. Hey, that's a great idea. Pursue it.' Then it happens. 

So we've been hitting on this theme of innovation since the beginning, and it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think it's just serendipitous or luck that U.S. News said for 11 years straight, this is one of the most innovative universities in the country. There's a lot of brick building. 

And so it gets gets back to sustaining it, being tenacious. Continue to build. Continue to move forward.

Jeff Selingo

Jim, you mentioned the trustees. And one of the things that we see in themes in our episodes is often the relationship between presidents and trustees sour at some point because you might be committed to it, but they may not be. Or they're committed to it, and you're not. 

So how did you kind of get on the same page? How did you kind of navigate through this time when things in some cases might not have been easy? Things you're placing big bets on — some things — and you didn't know exactly how they were going to go. What advice would you give to other presidents? Because when we see presidencies fail, it's often because the trustees and the president cannot see eye-to-eye on something. So is there any advice you have for other leaders around how to navigate this?

Jim Danko

I remember going to the Harvard new presidents program for one week, and they brought somebody in to talk about trustee relationships. And they say, 'Everything's going great with trustees until it's not.' 

I keep waiting for that moment. 

But I've been very fortunate. Our trustees have really been very, very supportive. But one of the things that I mean, I listened to what they were frustrated with. They didn't feel like they were engaged. They weren't communicated with. They didn't have a role. And I tried to look at them as like, 'Wow, you could be helpful to me.' I don't know everything. 

I had a board chair who was fantastic in finances. He'd ask occasional finance questions. I said, go talk to our CFO. That's a great idea. You know, come back and let's talk about what we could do. So engaging them in the success. Communicating is important. Building a relationship with each of those trustees, respecting them and so forth. 

And, you know, a bit of luck. You know, they really wanted me. 

I think I also recognize that my perceived business background differentiated me, and I was more of them. They didn't realize that I've been in the academic world for 30 years and actually I was very much of the academic side.

Michael Horn

So that gave you an advantage up and down?

Jim Danko

I think I was able to move both sides. 

And if you didn't like what I was doing, you blamed it on me being a business guy or you're too academic. So but for the most part, you have to kinda go down the middle. Right? And you work both sides, and you end up with a good result hopefully. Right?

Jeff Selingo

Okay. So innovation is a big theme that we wanna explore today here on the podcast. And as you mentioned, it was a big part of your vision when you became president. But I wanna talk a little bit about fit and alignment here because we see so often either presidents come in, and they don't lay out a vision. They just kind of like keep the institution going. Or, we've seen this very often, including somebody that was on our podcast a couple of years ago. They laid out a bold vision, and it was totally rejected by the institution. 

So I want to talk a little bit about your bio because you've mentioned some things that really struck us when we were talking about this episode. 

One is you were an entrepreneur for nearly two decades before beginning your academic career. 

And two, you were part of leadership teams at very elite institutions, right? Michigan, Tuck. At Dartmouth, and Chapel Hill. You know, that mindset, one as an entrepreneur, and then two coming from these very well-resourced institutions, they can cut both ways, right, on a campus like this. 

What was your approach? When did you lean into your background, either as an academic but at these institutions that people will say, 'Well, that's not Butler?' 

Or when did you lean into your entrepreneurial background and when do people say, 'Yes, but this is not a business. It is a mission-driven institution. 

How do you figure out when one thing takes the lead and when one thing should kind of sit back?

Jim Danko

That's a great question. I probably you know, success of leaders is just like, there's so much that goes into it, right? 

One thing is self awareness, awareness of the atmosphere that you're in, right? And some places that entrepreneurial thing would work, some places it didn't. 

One of the first times I was at University of Washington and they had, you know, a bunch of furniture in the MBA office that was from the 1920s, I believe. And, you know, they had the bureaucracy of getting it. Well, one day, I kinda gathered my team, and we found some bank, and the bank said, 'Well, we'll donate a bunch of this furniture if you come to the warehouse.' We rented a truck. I show up at University of Washington, completely redid all the offices, had new furniture, and it looked great. And I got in a lot of trouble. 

So it was like, 'Wait a minute. Is this thing tagged, and does this have the right, you know, this kind of that?' And so you push it as much as you can. That's a small example.

There's other places... You know, at Chapel Hill, they didn't really... I think they called me a Tasmanian devil at one time. They did not like the, you know, constant motion in that. And he was kinda like, this one isn't working out.

Jeff Selingo

So does it work better at institutions that are striving — that are places that are hungry?

Jim Danko

It gets back to you have to be in a position, and Butler's been ideal for me — it's a great fit in terms of size, scope, and scale for I think my background — where you could actually shift a culture in an organization. 

That's very hard to do at a Michigan or Washington. So you're not gonna change as easily there.

I had a great boss at Tuck. He actually hired me at Michigan, Paul Danos, who's kinda set me free at Tuck to do things. He was an academic. He thought in a certain way. I brought in another element. We were a great partnership. But I was free to do a lot of crazy things there, and that really helped. 

And, you know, Villanova too, and again, the Augustinian priest sometimes didn't like my attitude about being too aggressive, but you know, they like the ‘light under a bush’ type thing. But they've done great things too. 

But you've got to have a sense of what's around you and know what to push, when to push. It's so much better being in the presidency to be able to change a culture and to let those things play out.

Michael Horn

I'm hearing Tasmanian devil. Crazy. All these interesting descriptors.

Jim Danko

Have I ruined this? I gotta look at my wife to make sure. Is it alright? Because sometimes I'll say things, you know,

Michael Horn

No. This is great. This is great. But it gets to the question I wanna ask, which is, you know, what's the 'Why' here behind innovation? Because innovation's a big deal. But, I mean, you've seen this. Innovation for its own sake is just innovation theater. What’s the why? The purpose behind it here.

Jim Danko

It gets back to the change side. We cannot continue to operate... Anybody sitting around in 2011 that was looking or reading anything would realize, 'Oh my god, we're the next industry to fall.' We talked about that a lot here. Right? 

I remember talking about Blockbuster in one of my early speeches. Like, listen, they thought they were great until they weren't. And we are also heading for that. 

So we talked a lot about the forces of change happening out there. And you have to balance the ... Don't scare everybody where they can't move. To, ‘Here's the issue, here's a path forward.’ And the path forward is to have a place that's willing to take risk. Nobody was gonna get in trouble here. 

We had that fund. I was drawing on money. We kept that fund alive for about six, seven years and people had ideas and they needed $30,000. Here's $30,000, run with it. I couldn't tell you today if any of that stuff worked or not, but I could tell you that it fueled a sense of innovation. 

So things are changing. We need to adapt. We need to find that path, and we need to beat everybody else, too.

Michael Horn

Super interesting because it starts to create a culture then in the university. 

And I'm curious if that purpose is almost existential, right? Like the shark metaphor that you gave before. We gotta keep swimming forward, innovating, moving. Otherwise, we're gonna be caught in the crosshairs of some of these challenges coming for higher ed. 

How did that clarify the structures you needed to put in place to really solidify this culture of innovation? Like, what did you need to actually execute on the innovation and make it something that Butler could do as part of its everyday processes?

Jim Danko

Well, you had to have a culture where it was okay to fail. You had to have a culture that wanted to change because they knew that was gonna impress everyone, their bosses. Right? 

So if it's somebody in a division or even in a college. By the way, we had a great dean of our College of Education here who I always say that you're gonna hear more from Catherine on that, instilled that spirit of, 'Okay, let's do it.' It wasn't prevalent, necessarily, across the university. But you needed to get the right leaders in place. You needed a balance of leaders. 

And people needed to know... I'm not a micromanager, and you shouldn't be a micromanager. Let people be free. We've got smart people here. Let them play to their strengths. And those people that weren't interested in change or were, whatever, resistant to it, they'll move on. 

But it starts with a really strong, not only just leadership team, but we even work on below that. What are the people that are reporting to the leaders? So all of those have to support innovation. 

If you're gonna be standing over somebody like some 1920 manager, you're not gonna fit in the culture at Butler that we are developing. And to a person across our cabinet and our deans, they all recognize that's the style of leadership and management that we have here. Alright? Let people play to their strengths. They know better their area, if it's an academic discipline, than us. How do you support them to achieve something new that nobody thought of before?

Jeff Selingo

What's interesting about this too is that there's this culture of like, ‘We want to win.’ I think that's often missing on campuses. They don't see themselves as you would in the corporate world or as you would in the sports world, where you're in this to win something at some point, right? And I think that might be missing on some campuses in terms of their culture. 

I just want to stay with that for a moment, Jim, as we start to wrap up here, and before we turn to the panel that is really going to be focused on how this vision was actually realized. 

Because governance is something that's very different in higher ed compared to the rest of the world. You have trustees. We've talked a little bit about them. You have faculty. And my understanding is that the board was a big part of authorizing the initial innovation structures you put in place. 

What needed to be true for them to sign on from a funding perspective, for example? What kind of plans did you need to share with them in advance? Because, again, we're going to have a lot of trustees and presidents listening to this, and they're gonna wanna know, 'Okay. This all sounds great, but a lot of this is unknown. It's very ambiguous at some point.' And you need to say, 'We're going to make these bets, but we're not always going to know what the outcome is.' We can't do a pro forma on everything. We can't know exactly how much this is going to cost and how much this is going to return. So what did you need to do to satisfy the trustees, and what did you need to do to satisfy the faculty, if anything?

Jim Danko

Yeah, I just heard something. We did some alumni awards, and one of the recipients, they used some words. I won't get this exactly right, but it was kind of “calm, collaborative integrity.” 

And I think if people see that there is a calmness to this. You don't overreact to those people that are yelling and screaming, and you're always gonna have those people out there. You're calm through those things. You deal with those things when you have to. You're collaborative. Like, 'Listen, this is what we're thinking about doing.' 

I do think our transparency is strong here at Butler. That's an important thing. So we might disagree. And eventually you have to say, 'You know, at the end of the day, we hear you, but we have to move in this direction.' 

And I think over time, you build up integrity, not just myself, but your leadership team, your deans. We have people that... One of our deans of Arts and Sciences, which is the toughest job on campus, he's now our acting provost. It's just been a very steady, you know, our provost at the time that I hired, I pulled her out of the psychology department where she was a department chair. I thought she was outstanding. We just gave her an award. She's president at Saint Lawrence today. 

She was a very calming influence, and she would — she just mentioned this at this award ceremony — she would be the person that would say, 'Okay, we hear what you got. You guys are getting all crazy here. Here's how the faculty are gonna view that.' And, you know, we would decide which way to go, and then she would help make sure the path was paved. 

So it's that sense of collaboration. It's being consistent in the way you manage and lead. And it's respecting people and don't let those loud voices override everyone else where you say... They're still here, by the way. The same people that were yelling at me when I first showed up in 2011. Are any of them here? We could point them out actually. We all know who they are, and that's the point. You just don't play to that segment of the population.

Jeff Selingo

It's interesting because I think collaboration sometimes in higher ed is seen as 100% agreement, which you're never going to get to. Right? And I think a lot of presidents get sidelined because of that. They kind of get stuck in place because they're waiting for that.

Jim Danko

Yeah, I know a little bit was, 'How long you've been doing this?' and 'You were an entrepreneur.' But listen, when you start to do things for 40 or 50 years, you develop kind of the rhythm for how to do it. Some people are thrust into academic leadership that frankly don't have that experience. They were a researcher, they did this. Not to say that that's inappropriate, there are great leaders that have come out of that too, but they might not have had 30 years of being yelled at or how to get something to be achieved. 

So there is something I think about that. Right?

Jeff Selingo

Jim, thank you so much. This, I think, is a perfect place to leave it. And when we come back, we're going to explore Butler's innovation efforts much more deeply with a panel that's participated in that work. We'll be right back on Future U.

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Jeff Selingo

Welcome back to the second half of our Future U campus tour, which is being recorded before an audience of faculty, staff, the leadership team, and community members here at Butler University in Indianapolis. 

So we just talked with Jim Danko, the president of Butler, about kind of the how and the why of innovation. Now we're gonna kinda get into the weeds a little bit more about exactly what happened here at Butler over the last decade, plus. 

And we're really pleased to welcome kind of a nice collection of experts to the stage today. 

We have Katherine Pangan, who's a professor in the College of Education, who was one of the first innovation fellows that helped inform the creation of Butler Ventures, which we're gonna be talking about today, most specifically the Transformation Lab. 

We also have with us Melissa Beckwith, the chief strategy officer at Butler University, who I got to meet when she was a member of one of the cohorts of the Arizona State / Georgetown Innovation Academy for Higher Education Innovation. So thank you. It's great to see you again, Melissa. 

And we also have Chris Gahl, who's a longtime board member at Butler, who currently serves as the vice chair of Butler's board of trustees. And in his day job, Chris is the EVP and chief marketing officer of Visit Indy, and so has gotten us to come here, gotten the Future U campus tour. I know we're not as famous as, you know, the swimming and Olympics and the Super Bowl and everything else, but we're pleased to be here.

Chris Gahl

Thanks for visiting and bringing the tour here. It's a big deal. We're honored.

Jeff Selingo

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Michael Horn

Well, and we're honored to have all of you here. 

But as we dive in, and Melissa, I wanna start with you because I remember I was telling you beforehand, I remember those drives on Route 2 in Massachusetts where I live around the time that you were starting to do a lot of this work, and what I think of as Butler Ventures. But I know it was a journey to that point and that the entities have continued to evolve — these structures that you've set up to really carry out the innovation here at Butler. 

And I would just love your version of the origin story. We heard some of Jim's rationale for why innovation and the mentality across the different people at the university. But I'd just love your sense of what this needs to look like, the origin story, and the sense of what was success as you set this up?

Melissa Beckwith

Well, first of all, thanks for taking all of my phone calls six years ago. Those drive-time conversations, I think, were both informative from your perspective and frankly reassuring as we were setting out to do something that there wasn't a playbook for, and it was helpful to know we weren't crazy in what we were trying to do. And that something like this was badly needed in higher ed, so thank you for that. 

I think a couple of things that are important about the origin story of this — again, dating back six or seven years ago — is that when Jim was talking about innovation was a big part of his, you know, premise when he came in. 

But as we were launching the Butler Beyond strategy many years ago, we had intentionally talked about the fact that in order for us to make the pivot we needed to make as part of that strategy, we were going to need different structures and different methods of innovation in order to make that happen. 

So, you know, the whole thought of setting up a separate entity, which is named Butler Ventures, wasn't something we decided to do because we thought it would be fun and exciting. I mean, it's been a lot of work. It was a very intentional decision in support of our core strategy. So I think that was a really important point, of it wasn't something off to the side, it was something we had had to do in order to live into dual transformation, which is what we were really wanting to do at that time, which was not only enhance the amazing undergraduate education we have, but also at the same time broaden the learners that we serve in a way that we could scale broadly. 

And so we knew at the time that we needed separate structures, processes, capabilities, financial means, all of that in order to pull this off. So that I think was a really important point. 

So, coming out of a board of trustees meeting, we had the encouragement by the trustees to — at the point, I think the resolution said something as broad as — set up a new structure to do new programs, entities, and ventures. And that was about the direction.

Michael Horn

And that's simple, yeah.

Melissa Beckwith

Yeah. That was I think the crux of the direction we were given. Which in many ways, it was great that it was that broad. In other ways, it was, 'Okay, so what do we do now?' 

Interestingly, at that same time or a similar time, not only did the trustees kinda feel that way, but we had been working as part of a faculty advisory group that Jim convened. We had a group of faculty that were saying, 'Hey, we wanna innovate.' And they had actually come forward with an idea of, 'Could we set up a separate entity?' 

So we had these things colliding from multiple stakeholder perspectives — faculty, staff, administration — that all said, we wanna live into our big new strategy, and we need to figure out how to innovate quicker, faster, bigger. 

So that's a little bit of the context.

I think coming out of that trustee meeting, then we had to figure out, 'Okay, so what is this?' 'What are we really doing and how do we pull this together?' 

So we spent about 18 months doing a lot of work. 

Some of that was we visited Google and Apple's headquarters. We spent a lot of time with those companies out in California understanding how they did innovation. We met a number of times out at Arizona State with the EdPlus team and looked at how some of the leading universities were doing innovation. So we were taking learnings from all of that. And then we brought in a group at the time that was nationally doing some work in looking at how different universities set up innovation structures with Entangled. 

So for about, oh, seven or eight months, we interviewed and talked with a subgroup of faculty, with board members, with administrators, with our deans, and really talked about this concept of an innovation engine, and how separate does it need to be or how much part of Butler does it need to be? 

I think the original working premise was, ‘This needs to be absolutely separate, and it is a separate entity.’ Yet, I remember a conversation that I had with the chair of the faculty senate at that point in time and our then provost. And going back to a comment Jim made earlier, it was a great conversation because the chair of the Faculty Senate at that point said something similar to, you know, it's really easy to set up a separate entity to do innovation. Actually, what would be really innovative is if we set up an entity to achieve those same results, but did it in a way that invited collaboration and actually changed who Butler is. 

And that has stuck with us, I think, through the design of all of that. 

So a lot of work went into listening to what we were trying to do, or trying to achieve, which was really two things. One, Butler Ventures at the time was focused on how do we develop new models of education beyond traditional undergraduate education that are moving us toward where the world of higher ed's going. And the second is how do we do that in a way that we are bringing new revenue into the institution so that we are reducing our full-time undergraduate tuition dependency.

Jeff Selingo

Which is key, I think, for almost every other private institution and public institution out there these days. 

So Catherine, I wanna get your perspective here and perhaps give us the faculty perspective in particular about what innovation looked like before Butler set up these structures and these entities. 

What was the state of play? How were the innovation efforts at Butler both viewed by faculty members? How were they done?

Catherine Pangan

Sure. So I like to mark time with this experience as before Stephanie Hinshaw and after Stephanie Hinshaw. Thank you. 

So Stephanie Hinshaw is the associate vice president of transformation and really transformed what we know as the Transformation Lab. 

But at that time, before Stephanie Hinshaw, another innovation fellow and I, Tom Hanson from Lacey School of Business, wrote this report called The "Report of Ideas." So it seems so funny now to look back at that. But that "Report of Ideas" had elements of change that we wanted to see as far as innovation. And it addressed things like duplication efforts and making sure funding was available. And ideas tended to follow people instead of being sustainable and well sourced, so that was an element. And then also kind of cross-pollination efforts. 

People were really engaged in wanting to break down silos and that kind of thing and getting more systems involved and departments and community partners. So people were ready to go. We just kind of needed the systems to make that happen. Yeah.

Michael Horn

So Chris, I wanna turn to you because you were on the board in 2019 when the trustees had approved that mandate that, Melissa was describing earlier. 

And I'm just curious, like, how are you looking at this situation then? Right? What was the board perspective? What were the conversations you were all having? Why did you feel like you all needed something in place structurally like this? And give enough of a mandate, right, that they could play with it and see what is the exact right fit for Butler and tailor it really to this circumstance?

Chris Gahl

Yeah. It's a great question. Again, welcome. We're so happy you're here. 

I remember I was going back prior to this podcast thinking and going back into that room, into that retreat, and the challenge was there were all these external threats, nonacademic, nontraditional higher education threats coming at us — new players entering the industry. I remember we were focused on adult learners, online learners, outside collaborators. How are we going to wrestle with this? What will Butler of the future look like? 

Of course, it's pre-pandemic. One of the things Jim Danko does exceptionally well in the board of trustees meetings, and there are many things, is a 50-50 rule. 50% of the time is presenting and having the faculty and the staff and the admin team present, and then 50% is trustee engagement.

Michael Horn

That's nice.

Chris Gahl

And he holds that true — meeting after meeting after meeting. And so it gave us the breathing room to hear about some of these external threats and then to ideate around what pilot programs can we be thinking about and should we be focused on heading into the future. So, for those listening, the 50-50 rule is something I've tried to implement in other boardrooms. It's hard to do. And at Butler, Jim does it exceptionally well.

Jeff Selingo

That's a great rule that I think other trustees will wanna pick up on. 

So, Melissa, we know Butler Ventures has evolved and indeed internally, you don't even call it that, anymore. So can you share with us what that evolution has looked like and what comprises Butler Ventures today?

What does that look like?

Melissa Beckwith

Yeah. Absolutely. 

So the moniker Butler Ventures is simply the name of the entity within which we intentionally designed kind of three major units, originally. 

One is the Transformation Lab which is our R&D hub for future models of education and the idea center, I would say, of Butler Ventures and now the university. 

The second was originally the Division of Professional Studies. So this was intended to be the delivery arm of new programs or new models that wouldn't necessarily fit in our traditional colleges. 

And then the third unit was our education venture investment arm, which was our way to partner with startup organizations that were solving higher ed challenges in very different ways than higher ed does. 

So that we could learn from those startups, but also contribute to those startups with our knowledge. 

So those three groups, were intended to work together under Butler Ventures. I'd say where we are today is we have made a number of changes. 

You know, what you design and what you build is not always what you end up with, right? And so I think the major changes that we or what it looks like today is we dissolved the Division of Professional Studies over the last year. All of the online adult credit-bearing programs that were started and launched in the Division of Professional Studies have moved into our colleges. 

On the education venture side, we have a new venture mechanism for the entire university we're building. So any future work that's related to education ventures, we'll move into that. 

But I think the biggest change is the evolution of the Transformation Lab. So what was started as the R&D hub for things that would reside in ventures, really new models. Because of the amazing team that we have there and the trust and collaboration they built with the university, we now run all new academic programs, even our traditional undergraduate programs through that. 

Now they stood up a continuous improvement arm for the university. They will be a helpful execution arm as we move into our next strategy which we're launching later today. 

So they really have become not just an R&D hub that kind of sits off to the side, but they really have become the true innovation engine for the university.

Jeff Selingo

So Chris, there's a lot of change from what was originally approved, It sounds like from what Melissa just described. And I think one of the challenges in higher ed, as we were talking with Jim earlier is the relationship with the board and the president. 

And I know we keep kind of coming back to this, but in the nine years of doing this podcast, the leadership stories we continue to hear is that tension between the board and the president. Somebody always wants to move faster. Somebody always wants to move slower. You know, usually, there's alums on the board who say, 'Well, it's not the way it was when I was here.' Right? Or there are business people on the board who say, 'I don't understand this thing called shared governance. Why can't we just do things?' 'I don't have to do this in my day job.' Right? 

So, you know, it takes a great deal in our opinion of courage, trust, and risk tolerance for a board to support innovation. 

So I think it would be helpful for our listeners to understand, you know, what type of dynamics must be present in a board to successfully achieve what Butler has? 

Like, even as these things were shifting over the years, what's your view as a trustee? What are the conversations you're having with the president, with people like Melissa, to understand this? Is it always happening just in formal board meetings? Like, how are you understanding what's happening here so that the board could kind of get behind it? 

Because I think one of the things boards hate, one of things presidents hate are surprises. Right? So how are you constantly not micromanaging, not managing the situation, but governing the situation?

Chris Gahl

Another great question. 

I was driving on campus. By the way, it's homecoming this weekend. So it's timely you're here. And I bumped into another Butler trustee, and I shared with her that I was heading here, and it made me think about three kind of ideas, in this dynamic piece. 

One is diversity of thought. Our trustees are incredibly diverse. We lean into the abolitionists who helped found Butler University. We have a former Fortune 200 CFO. We have a federal judge who has served in the past. We have community activists and entrepreneurs. It's just very eclectic. And so is there a diversity of thought around the boardroom into the trustee table? And I can tell you, yes. There is. 

Honesty of approaching innovation and threats on the horizon. Are we being honest as trustees of what is coming at us? And Jim Danko and Melissa do an excellent job proposing these threats and listening to the threats and having honest discourse and conversation around the threats on the horizon. So diversity of thought around the table, honesty of approaching threats.

And then the third is community minded. We have neighborhoods in a city in Indianapolis that are surrounding us. And so does the innovation — the programs and the and the piloting — will that benefit the community? Will we get buy-in? If not, then how successful will we be? 

So I think we've seen fruits of this innovation play off very quickly, and deans sharing that Eli Lilly, one of the largest global foundations on planet Earth, is here in Indianapolis, about ten minutes from here. And they have given generously to our innovation, programs and pilots. 

And we've seen fruit of the Founders College with — with a two-year startup. We've seen, Butler Overseas, which we're launching in 2027, which is part of this innovation discussion that the trustees said, yes. Six semesters, six continents, let students go out and get degrees in business and environmental studies. 

And so we have just been listened to, engaged authentically, and given a runway to have healthy discussion in the trustee table. And it's not just plop in for that quarterly meeting or Zoom in for that committee meeting with their camera off, like it's really actively listening and that's what Jim has fostered here on campus.

Michael Horn

Catherine, I wanna turn to you because the Transformation Lab has been mentioned a few times. 

You've launched initiatives within the Transformation Lab, this innovation arm, and I would love to make it more real for our listeners. Like, what does the work look like, the experience of working in the transformation look like? How is it staffed? 

You know, how as a faculty member, you got a teaching load, how do you interact with it? And how it changes how your own time is allocated when you're working on a project there versus, you know, sort of the day-to-day teaching load and so forth.

Catherine Pangan

Right. So, I've been here for about 18 years, and I can say the Transformation Lab is one of the best entities on campus, hands down. 

They make innovation accessible for professors who might not know how to get started or things like that. But right now, like Butler Overseas was mentioned, I'm running the Butler lifelong learning collaborative, which is a kind of educational initiative for lifelong learners and older adult senior citizens. 

And I've helped advise, with Imagi, which is a Swedish EdTech company. 

So all sorts of really great projects going on that kind of fulfill that professional need. 

And also as someone who is a seasoned professor who is not drawn traditionally to administrative collegiate roles. This really gives professors a creative outlet and a leadership outlet that is different, I think, than other kind of pathways of next steps.

Michael Horn

So I wanna stay there for a moment because I think it's interesting when you say it gives that creative outlet. 

You're advising an edtech company. You're doing all these things that you wouldn't normally get to do presumably. How has it changed the conversation among faculty around what innovation at Butler means? Like, you know, do faculty, it seems very different from what you were describing, you know, 15 years ago.

Catherine Pangan

Right. It's doable. And, like Jim said, we had a former dean who would always suggest, 'Yes.' So it was always, 'Yes. Let's figure it out.' And now I feel like that's the culture of the entire university. Like, 'Let's try it. 

We know who to go to. We know that the team is such a high-quality, joyful team that we can, you know, enjoy the experience of working on a project.' So I think that completely changed the culture of getting things done.

Jeff Selingo

So, Melissa, we're at a university. People get graded all the time. So I'm kinda curious about, how would you grade yourself? Right? 

What's worked well? What hasn't? What would you do differently? And then just in terms of numbers and initiatives, give us some context, like, what are the results?

Melissa Beckwith

Yeah. So I think I'm gonna talk to outcomes first. 

So you've heard a couple of examples already. Because of the Transformation Lab and because of Butler Ventures, we launched Founders College, a two-year college that welcomed our first cohort this fall, that we're very excited about for students that are Pell eligible in our own community. Right? So that was a big deal. 

We launched and are launching Butler Overseas that Chris just talked about, modeled a little bit after Minerva but with a very different twist and a Butler twist to that. So, those are just two examples. 

Other metrics that are important to us is if you think about it in the last Butler Ventures has been operational about four years. We've launched over 35 new programs, and those are only — those aren't undergrad programs, those are adult online credential training programs. We've served over 5,500 new learners, generated additional millions in revenue, and I think the most exciting is through that, we've engaged over 600 faculty, staff, and community partners in that work. So those... Yeah. Those metrics are pretty awesome. 

I think the outcomes, the models, so not just programs, but these new models that we're developing that are, you know, we're one of a handful of universities doing some of these models. So in that way, I think we have done a tremendous amount. 

We have had changes along the way, and I think I mentioned that. You know, when we realized something wasn't working, we made changes. So it wasn't ... I had a hard time sitting here and saying, ‘Gosh, what would I do differently?’ Because I think we've been doing things differently when we realized they didn't work along the way. 

So in terms of a grade, because you're gonna force me to do that, I'd give us a solid A-. 

Okay. And here's why I'd say that, is we are incredibly proud of the work we've done, and it is transformative. And at Butler, there's also this just this sense of like restless ambition that we're never happy. We always want things bigger, faster, better, and I think that's a good thing. 

And so I keep the A to A+ sitting out there because it's something to strive for.

Michael Horn

Great. I think I mean, you feel this energy here on campus. Like, it's infectious among all of you. 

And so as we wrap up here, Chris, I'm just curious, like, your perception, the board's perception of innovation efforts here, and maybe we'll play off that A-. The best is yet to come is what I'm hearing. 

So what do you think the next phase of innovation efforts for Butler looks like? I know you're launching the strategic plan and so forth.

Chris Gahl

AI. 

We've not addressed the acronym in the room. And to speak of innovation as we sit here today with homecoming and the pomp and circumstance and Founders College and all of these ventures that we've gone through is AI. 

And so Jim and Melissa and I were even talking this week about the integration and the innovation around AI for our students. 

You mentioned my hats that I have on today. One of those, I'm also ... My wife and I who we met here, we have a student here. We have a freshman here.

Jeff Selingo

You're really wearing every hat.

Chris Gahl

That's right. And so I'm emotionally invested in Butler. I'm financially invested in Butler. 

And so with the trustee hat on, I also need to know that AI is part of the discussion. 

You know, we're also very competitive here at Butler. I don't want you to think that we're nice because we are and we're hospitable, and you have nice socks on. I saw those, both of you. You know, if I asked you both your football allegiances, you would say probably Commanders.

Michael Horn

I'm the Commanders fan, believe it or not.

Jeff Selingo

He he grew up in DC.

Chris Gahl

Our Colts are 3-0. Right?

Jeff Selingo

The Colts are great. I mean, it's ...

Chris Gahl

Yeah. The Fever are in the playoffs as we're discussing now. So we're competitive, and Jim leads that with his entrepreneurial spirit. So don't think the next iteration of Butler innovation won't be competitive because it will be here in Indianapolis.

Jeff Selingo

Great. 

Well, terrific. We're gonna leave it there then. Michael, any closing reactions?

Michael Horn

Normally we do one or two, but I have to have three quickly, I promise, just because this has been exciting, and I've been enthused by it. 

First, I'll start with the people, not just on the basketball team and if Gordon Hayward had made that last second shot. I would have been happy, too. But what I heard from Jim, not just getting the right people in the leadership team, but the next rungs down and how important that is, seems just really, really critical. 

The second one, I'll just say, fitting the right structure and being malleable to getting the right structure for the strategy and knowing whatever you come out with in plans, it's always gonna be part wrong. Like, that's just ... That's innovation. You never get it right 100%, and you get it right by having that piece of iteration. 

But also, I heard it a lot — and I just I didn't get it when Jim first said it, but when you said it— Chris, also, the external threats. How much of higher ed dismisses when people say external threats? Instead, when times were still solid here, in fact, they were great coming off those runs, you all looked soberly at those threats and said, 'Okay, how do we flip them into opportunities?' 

That's the essence of dual transformation, and it's huge. 

And then I guess just the last thing: how many boards have you been a part of where you get 50-50 ideation?

Jeff Selingo

I love this 50-50.

Michael Horn

I would love that as a board member.

Jeff Selingo

Well thank you. A couple of thoughts here. Culture. Culture has come up so many times here, and one of the things, one of the failures of leadership that we see — and we just did this paper on this — is just mapping your culture as a president or as a leader when you come in. Really understanding it. Because I think a lot of leaders come in and think, 'I'm going to change the culture,' without even understanding what's there to begin with. So I know we've been trying to encourage people to map that culture. I think this idea of who does the innovation on campus? Is it an internal entity? Is it an external entity? I think some of the examples you've seen in higher ed, it's sometimes just people think it's easier just to do it externally. Like we're just going to set up a separate Skunk Works shop and just let them do it because they don't wanna deal with the governance. And that may not be the best option all the time. Or if it is, eventually, maybe you do move it in, but I think we just see sometimes,'Let's just do the separate piece of it.' I think the different perspectives on the board is really important. I think boards are becoming too focused on philanthropy, which is important. But often when you tie board membership to philanthropy, there's a sense in the room that the only reason that person's in the room is for their philanthropy. And having different perspectives where people could honestly disagree and discuss, I think, is gonna be critically important, especially right now given the threats facing higher education. So I'm gonna leave it at that. Thank you again to Butler University. And thank you again to Butler University for sponsoring this stop on the Future U campus tour in the great city of Indianapolis — which by the way should be a city known more for higher education than it is. And so we should talk about how to change that maybe at some point. But thank you to president Denko and all of our panelists, Melissa, Chris, Catherine. Thank you. And thank you to our audience for being here and joining us today on this live recording of Future U.