Bellwether Education Partners recently published the 3rd paper in a series focused on analyzing the emerging ecosystem of innovation in K-12 public education- Pull and Push: Strengthening Demand for Innovation in Education.
This paper builds on concepts from Larry Berger’s piece (that I analyzed in a previous post), which seeks to identify the barriers that prevent innovative ideas and systems from being fully adopted into the K-12 landscape. This is a good read for anyone currently looking to transform the education space using technology tools, to help gain perspective of your target users, teachers and students, and understand how to encourage adoption in the current system. The paper revisits barriers that inhibit the number and power of early adopters and that limit the spread of innovations, and identifies ways to strengthen the demand for improved innovation and productivity in public education.
The core of the paper is the analysis of these 4 key ways to engage educators and increase demand for your innovation.
1. Encourage early adopters: Identify, support and strengthen the work of education’s existing early adopters.
2. Bolster smart adoption: Replace policy and operational barriers that inhibit smart adoption with infrastructure that encourages it.
3. Provide better information to encourage smart demand: Create useful information tools to inform and strengthen both early and mainstream demand.
4. Reward productivity improvements: Redefine the culture of public education so that people and organizations are able to identify, obtain and be rewarded for improved outcomes and productivity.
If you found this piece interesting or useful, I recommend checking out the previous two publications as well.
This paper is the third in a series of publications from the Innovation for the Public Good: A Case Study of US Education project, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. This project analyzes key aspects of an emerging ecosystem for innovation in public education in the US, highlighting recent efforts to fuel and steer more innovation, and framing the challenges that lie ahead for the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. The first two papers Steering Capital: Optimizing Financial Support for Innovation in Public Education and Supporting and Scaling Change: Lessons from the First Round of the Investing in Innovation (i3) Program, were released earlier this year.
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