Innovation: A framework #2

I've submitted a response to the current Productivity Commission exercise considering aspects of the New Zealand tertiary education system. Unsurprisingly it has an explicit focus on innovation, which seems a key theme right across higher education providers at the moment. My current role sees me responsible for a fantastic team of dedicated learning and teaching innovators, and I'm proud to be able to say that their ideas really rock my world from time to time. I'm even prouder to say that I am actively encouraging them to make me uncomfortable.

My interest in innovation goes back to - I'm embarrassed to say - last Millennium, when I studied entrepreneurship as part of my BMS at Waikato University. I was greatly influenced by reading the late, great Peter Drucker and encountering the theory of Joseph Schumpeter. The lessons from these classes, innovation in the context of entrepreneurship, have guided my interest in online distance education right from the start.
'innovation' is not a strategy in itself.
In a previous post I mentioned innovation in terms of custom, core and context. In the submission I mentioned what I'd look for when evaluating the potential for an innovation to actually made a difference. Most of these can be discerned at the ideation stage... and apologies that they all start with S!
  • Stretch: the innovation is genuinely different from what might just be incrementally expected. 
  • Scalability: the innovation can apply beyond a single instance, in that its success relies on variables that are transferable and don’t break under high demand. 
  • Systematisation: the innovation is effectively harnessed, in ways that it is not easy to reverse. 
Across these three we can see at a glance why 'innovation' is not a strategy in itself. Across my own online and distance education career I've seen first hand how the 3Ss Framework (sure, why not give it a title?) explains just why some supposed innovations were ultimately merely dissipated instances of activity: 
  • Stretch: the innovation is not really that innovative, or its benefits do not justify its continuation. 
  • Scalability: the innovation relies on a key individual, specialised skillset, or applies only to a particular subject area. 
  • Systematisation: it is too complex, expensive or risky to change the way things are done for the innovation to be more widely adopted. 
Ultimately innovation relies on another term starting with I: implementation. It's certainly enough for innovations to disrupt practice however innovations are only successful in this if there are elements of them that can be viably carried forward into practice. Often innovators find themselves isolated, guarding ideas that only work with them in the equation and fighting off naysayers who are reluctant to change their usual contribution to the overall system. 

The ultimate goal of innovation, and those calling for it, must surely be implementation. Without implementation, innovation is all light and no heat; all techno-beat and no rhythm; all expenditure and no return;all journey and no destination; all talk, and no change. 

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