• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.34 no.12
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• pp.1980-1991
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• 2010

This study proposes the O P E N Triad framework as a future set of tools and perspectives for individual members and institutes to further their professional and academic potential as well as prospect and vitalize the future of the Korean Clothing and Textiles discipline through a global perspective. The millennial generation desires On-demand, Personal, Engaging, and Networked (O P E N) experiences effecting cultural change for creative and influential interaction in transactions, communication, and education. O P E N Individuals offers a WebSphere model as a holistic learning system that has a synergizing value of education across academic courses, industries, and cultures. Through a digitalized and virtualized class, it complements relevant technologies already familiar to the student population. By employing environmental scanning approaches, the most influential and viable future global issues related to the clothing and textiles discipline are identified and dialogued within O P E N Institutes. For future clothing and textiles institutes, this scanning allows them to be open to new ideas, to focus on inter-engagements, to collaborate among individuals, to associate as a part of web of people, organizations, and ideas, to personalize an institutes curricula, and to dialogue generative knowledge. O P E N Industries reveals three dominant future issues that cross academia and industry, sustainability, supply chain management, and social networking. In-depth interviews with U.S. industry experts identified interdependent gaps in global consumer experience practices and suggested the following gaps as future research areas: a standardized business model to the entrepreneurial model, strategic management to a sustainable competitive advantage, standardized to differentiated products, services and operations, market segmentation to global consumer clusters, business-driven marketplaces to consumer-engaged marketspaces, and excellent services to optimal experience. This O P E N Triad framework empowers millennial students, universities, and industries to anticipate and prepare for a radically changing world.