Innovation and adoption in school systems

Most schools and districts lack the ability to systematically innovate and measure adoption and transfer to practice.

There are several knowledge management efforts under development in K-12. The New Leaders for New Schools Effective Practice Incentive Fund proposes to incentivize high performing teachers and leaders to share effective practice via a free, online knowledge base. This is an ambitious and promising project, however its success is predicated on the ability of organizations to discover and adopt practices. Knowledge management projects have two persistent challenges:

1. How do we incentivize individuals and teams to contribute best practice to the knowledge base? KM initiatives which fail to aggregate and keep current high quality, relevant practices will collect dust and fade away?
   
2. How do we promote and measure the impact of adoption into practice?
   

Many KM initiatives attempt to measure use and adoption, but as Victor Newman points out in The Knowledge Activist's Handbook, most KM efforts fail to analyze and reengineer the business processes of innovation and adoption. If districts lack the processes and skills required to research problems of practice, innovate, and manage change then KM efforts will remain relatively inert.

Firms who have innovation as a distinctive competence (e.g., 3M, pharaceutical sector, etc.) have sophisticated processes for discovery, sharing, and adoption of innovations. There's an adage in entrepreneural environments -- "innovate or die." These processes are designed to minimize the time to productivity for new innovations and maximize the return. What is a relevant innovation process for districts and schools? What is the motivation for innovation in K-12 and how can we foster and measure the transfer of innovations to practice for maximum benefit?

Subsequent posts will examine this possible model for fostering innovation and adoption in schools and districts. As always, your comments are invited.