Leading Innovation

Last in a series about improving practice and creating a culture of innovation

The three qualities I said were necessary for fully innovative schools:
1.  Teachers claiming their roles as researchers, since research leads to innovation.
2.  Teachers knowing their impact, since professionals seek to increase their impact.

And, for this blog post:
3.  Innovation loves company: Leaders must expect transparent innovation across the school rather than supporting pockets of innovation.


At Google, employees are expected to share their passion projects.  This transparency eliminates silos and leverages the power of group-think to solve problems.  A recent article on IBM's Almaden Lab, one of the last corporate pure research labs, talks about how the researchers have switched from working in isolation to projects that co-evolve.

We need to develop schools in which teacher-researchers freely share their innovative projects with one another.  And leaders need to set the tone by sharing their own passion projects and expect the sharing of innovation across the board.  Remember: innovation does not have to be a disruptive practice, and sometimes we happen upon it by accident.  New educators may need assistance from others to discover what their passion is.  As we learned in the book Better (prior blog post), making daily practice better with consistent small innovations can be just as effective as searching for the miracle cure.

Impact is a measure of innovation.  If principals want to increase impact, we need to first ask how we are increasing innovation.

So what is YOUR innovation?  Your passion project?
Math talk ~ Personalized learning ~ Increasing feedback ~ Technology for achievement ~
Character ed ~ Building relationships with special ed students ~
Using achievement data better ~ Service learning ~ Parent relationships ~
Goal setting ~ Coaching other educators ~ ???

The list doesn't end.  Because innovation doesn't end.
Because getting better can't end.