You Say ‘Silo’ as If It Were a Bad Thing…
21st June 2025
Everyone seems to want to break down silos. They are monsters to be destroyed. In consultant-speak, silos stand for isolation, inefficiency, and a myopic refusal to collaborate. The “silo mentality” is a dysfunctional reluctance to share information. In universities, silos are the cause of duplicated efforts, internal competition, and the failure to innovate to serve the customer-student.
Everything about this view is wrong. In the AI era, the responsibility of researchers and specialists to preserve domain-specific knowledge with integrity, to keep going deep while others go broad, will be more important than ever. The universities that protect disciplinary silos are the ones who will thrive.
In fact, the metaphor makes my case. A real, physical silo is a marvel of functional design. Silos store and protect grain. Silos preserve quality and integrity. Without silos, grain rots. A silo is a sanctuary. Its purpose is preservation, not isolation.
Much like the canard Diversity Is Our Strength. Diversity is actually a weakness, promoting division, suspicion, and cliquishness.