This morning I listened to really a inspiring Keynote by Larry Keeley called Finding the Future First. The conference theme is innovation, ingenuity, and insight. Larry took us through the basics of innovation and some thinking about what we need to get innovation in education, which is typically sluggish to adopt and adapt.
Among the points he made:
1. All enterprises and industries need to innovate, to be responsive to changing conditions, but most innovations faiL. The failure rate is 96%.
He quoted Charles Darwin - it is not the strongest of the species that survive… but the ones most responsive to change.
2. Effective innovation is not about new products, it is fundamentally about having more discipline. New products are the least valuable things to come up with.
He identified 10 types of innovation related to Finance, Process, Offering and Delivery. All important things use a combination of the 10. Most stitch together 6 or more types of innovation at the one time. The most successful hit 8 or more.
3. Systemic change is routine. It is easier to spot looking backwards in time than in looking forwards. Central control should always be suspect. Real systemic change affects the way we do things.
4. Standards pave the way for improved function and style. When we agree on standards, the pace of innovation increases. The problem in education is that we often have only a loose alignment to standards. In education there is often a complex web of interdependence.
Keeley wound up by talking about the catalytic role of educational professional associations like CoSN in sponsoring change and innovation.
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