Thomas Carey is WINCan’s co-Principal Catalyst for Academic Partnerships and Executive-in-Residence in the Monash University Faculty of Arts. His past roles as a “serial intrapreneur” in higher education include faculty member, department head and executive in Canadian research universities as well as system-level leadership roles in Ontario, British Columbia and California.
We have reached an important milestone in our WINCan “Wildly Important Goal” for higher education programs – ensuring that Every Graduate Can Be an Innovation-Enabler in the workplace (and in their other roles as community members and global citizens). Ta-da: the first offering of our foundation course unit on Understanding Workplace Innovation: Concepts and Cases concludes this week, thanks to our wonderful partners at Monash Arts in Melbourne.
For those of you familiar with startup jargon, this was our Minimum Viable Product project test with real students (and followed our Proof-of-Concept studies in B.C. and prototyping work with workplace partners in Ontario). Our next few blog posts will highlight what we – and our students – have learned from this experience and where we’ll be taking this endeavour next.
Next steps: Already in the works is a follow-up MVP project with workplace partners, to test our value proposition for students to contribute to workplace innovation projects through Work-Integrated Learning placements. Beyond the well-known benefits of work-integrated learning, we have two specific reasons why a WIL placement is vital for our graduates:
· The students in our foundational course unit have developed and demonstrated their innovation capability around their own work as learners in higher education. While that is a real-world workplace context, it is a different reality than the other contexts where they will be seeking to contribute: corporate sector, public sector, social and community enterprises, small and medium size companies.
It’s important for students to experience some of the ways that the differences amongst these contexts affects how innovation projects are carried out…and to alert them to other differences, across cultures for example. That’s why we have proposed that our capability specification include at least two contexts for workplace innovation, as well as multiple types of innovation projects (e.g., Innovation Adaptation, Directed Innovation) and multiple roles within them (e.g., as Sponsor User and Prototype Evaluator)
· The other reason we want to incorporate work-based learning early in the program is the need for apprenticeship-type learning as part of an experienced innovation team. While we can provide expert innovation coaches via our instructional team, in a course unit context the project team members are almost always novices in Workplace Innovation. It is vital for students to be part of a professional innovation environment, including coming to understand the limitations of their own capability and the multiple other professional roles which complement and support employee-drive innovation.
Making a Business Case for WIL placements: what can our students do for your organization?
For students to receive full value from a workplace experience, we will want them to be active participants– not just passive observers – in innovation projects. This requires that we define how they can contribute value: we want to provide short-term benefit at the project team level, not just long-term benefit at the organizational level (e.g., building up our brand with the student audience or getting an advanced look at potential recruits after graduation). If the WIL assignments are a vital part of the learning, we must identify where students can add value in workplace contexts and design content and outcomes in the foundation course accordingly.
“Course pages are created by educators to describe the activity their students will work on. A course page is used to advertise the types of projects from companies an educator is looking for.
To “pretotype” this business case – as well as to “road-test” course unit outcomes – we constructed scenarios in the Course Pages format of Riipen, a leading online Marketplace that connects employers, instructors and students around WIL learning needs and opportunities. We framed these as scenarios for a fictional Greenfields University.
Term 1: Greenfields University students will participate in Internships, On-site or Virtual, with one or more innovation projects in your workplace (corporate, public or social sector). Student team members have already developed and demonstrated capability in workplace innovation, both in-course and in workplace projects on-campus. They can contribute value to your workplace innovation projects in roles such as the following:
as representative users in Design Thinking projects creating new products and services targeting their demographic factors (age, cultural background, location, etc.). All students have earned an industry micro-credential in Design Thinking at the Practitioner level (in which this role is framed as Sponsor User).
as process support staff in Innovation Adaptation projects where a workplace team is analyzing an innovative practice, process or product from an external context for potential use to address a challenge within their own workplace.
as support assistants to staff engaged in other Better Work projects (e.g., Job Crafting), to advance both organizational performance and the quality of work life.
At the conclusion of the internship, the students provide a summary report and discussion session for your workplace innovation leaders, on the Strengths and Aspirations they have observed in those workplace innovation activities. This is both a reflection opportunity for the students and their host team, and a possible base for an (optional) follow-on Knowledge Mobilization project. (Ideally, teams of at least two students will be interning on your projects, to broaden and deepen their analysis and reflection for the Strengths and Aspirations report.)
Benefits to your organization: The student intern project roles defined above are designed to contribute direct value to the projects on which they are working. In addition, their Strengths and Aspirations report - and accompanying discussion session - provides your organization with a reflective lens on your current workplace innovation processes and methods, and the foundation for a potential follow-on Knowledge Mobilization project to seek out and apply relevant new knowledge from outside your organization.
Benefits to our students: In the process of contributing value to your organization's innovation projects, the students gain understanding of your real-world context for workplace innovation. They also begin to develop a clearer personal vision of the organizations best positioned to utilize their own workplace innovation expertise. Students will receive credit for their activities as part of our GRIP3101 course unit, Workplace Innovation Internship.
Team support resources: The student teams will be supported by the expertise of the GRIP3101 unit Coordinator and other Greenfields University academic staff with workplace innovation knowledge, and by the expertise in personal management and professional development of our Work-Integrated Learning support team.
What we learned: We had originally conceived the WIL placement as concluding with the students’ Reflection activity. However, examining other Course Pages within Riipen pushed us to go further in creating value for the organizational level sponsors (including Human Resource professionals). We also wanted to appeal to workplace innovation leaders, who might already have full project teams but would be intrigued by the contents of the student report:
· Student perceptions re Strengths and Aspirations, as a reflection by potential new hires
· The potential opportunity for a follow-up project to increase awareness of new research and practice in workplace innovation
Adding value to the WIL experience through Knowledge Mobilization
Based on some of our own past experiences in Knowledge Mobilization with industry partners, we grew confident that student teams could follow up on their Internship experiences with an In-Class Project as outlined below. This second term of work would be optional on the part of both employer and students, and the supporting course unit would be a future level of development in our program plan (in collaboration with other subject areas at Greenfields).
The new interdisciplinary course unit hosting the project would extend existing Knowledge Mobilization courses which focus on curation, translation and mobilization of research results into evidence-based practice. For an emerging area like workplace innovation, the rapid rate of change means that exemplary practices and promising innovations are of value to practitioners. Each student team would have a core of students following up on a Virtual Internships with the same workplace host; they might also be extended by students in other support subject areas.
Here are our initial Course Page entries for the Greenfields University Term 2 WIL projects, to invite work-in-progress discussion on student team contributions to organizational capability:
Term 2 (optional): The student team engages in a Knowledge Mobilization Project to analyze research evidence, exemplary practices and promising new methods in workplace innovation. They will provide an initial analysis of Opportunities to advance innovation capability and potential Results on innovation impacts in your workplace context. This analysis builds on the Term 1 analysis using the outline of a S-O-A-R report – an alternative to a traditional SWOT report. The team participates in a discussion session with workplace innovation leaders to identify initial steps to expand your organization’s workplace innovation knowledge capability.
Knowledge Mobilization Project activities-- through their affiliation with a research university, the student team members have forged connections to a larger body of knowledge about advances in workplace innovation processes and methods. Building on their knowledge of your organizational context and current capability in workplace innovation, the Knowledge Mobilization project team will curate a select set of recent knowledge advances which can most efficiently and effectively enhance your workplace innovation capability to a higher level.
That collection of 'low hanging fruit' knowledge advances may come from current research evidence, exemplary practices at leading-edge organizations and promising innovations currently emerging. The student team will translate these knowledge advances into your organizational framework and context, and also will support your workplace innovation leaders in assessing the value of these advances in furthering your organizational goals for a more innovative workforce and workplace.
Benefits to your organization: The student team's report on Opportunities and Results - and accompanying discussion session - extends the work in their Virtual Internships to provide a full S-O-A-R analysis. The impact for you is a more comprehensive knowledge base for your own innovation leadership as they create a roadmap to advance workplace innovation.
Benefits to our students: In the process of adding value to your organizational planning to advance workplace innovation, the students gain a deeper understanding of the contextual factors governing the opportunities and constraints for developing and utilizing workplace innovation capability. They also develop a clearer personal vision of the organizations best positioned to utilize their own workplace innovation expertise. Students will receive credit for their activities as part of our interdisciplinary GRIP3201 course unit, Knowledge Mobilization Project.
Team support resources: The student teams will be supported by the expertise in Knowledge Mobilization of the GRIP3201 course unit Coordinator and related academic staff, the expertise of others related to Workplace Innovation as in the prerequisite GRIP3101 course unit, and by the personal management and professional development expertise of our Work-Integrated Learning support team.
Acknowledgement: our thanks to Kim Bartkowksi and Stella Drivas (IBM Garage -- Sydney, Australia) and Karel Vredenburg (Director, IBM Global Design Leadership and Academic Programs) for their help in articulating the Innovation Intern (Term 1) position.