Will open education replace or supplement traditional higher education? 

Digital innovation in higher education feeds speculation about the transformation of higher education and the future role of universities. Many of these speculations contain questionable implicit assumptions about current and future business models in higher education. 

This conceptual article uses an innovation management perspective to critically examine the use and misuse of the business model concept in the context of digital innovation in higher education. This is based on Raymond's metaphor of the cathedral and the bazaar, in which traditional commercial software development (the cathedral) is contrasted with open source software development (the bazaar). 

The authors make an analogy with the relationship between 'cathedral-like' business models in traditional higher education (e.g. universities) and 'bazaar-like' business models in open education (e.g. open educational resource publishers). From the historical perspective that we now have on the evolution of the software industry, the authors criticize the ubiquitous substitution story of destruction and disruption of the sector, and propose an alternative narrative of interdependence and mutually innovative catalysis. The authors predict that ecosystems in higher education will be based on synergistic relationships between organizations representing many gradations in the continuum between 'cathedral-type' and 'bazaar-type' organizations.
 

Download the article The cathedral’s ivory tower and the open education bazaar – catalyzing innovation in the higher education sector in Open Access.