Anahita Baregheh and Thomas Carey
In Part I of this blog post, we explored how one Research Insight on Strategic Innovation from research in the corporate research – distinguishing Discovery, Incubation and Acceleration activities and the corresponding organizational competencies – plays out differently in the context of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In developing our two Strategic Innovation scenarios for higher education institutions, another major difference we noted was the challenge of rapid prototyping as an Incubation activity.
This challenge was evident in the Greenfields scenario for a startup university seeking to ramp up an innovative teaching and learning approach (given that the institution would be largely reliant on public funding). Ramping up to and beyond a Minimum-Viable-Product can be done if part of the value proposition is an exclusive elite cohort, as shown by Minerva (funded by patient venture capital). That will be much harder for a public institution taking in one new cohort annually, with a four-year program duration to demonstrate a successful value proposition. It would take very patient capital by a government source when the payoff comes – if at all – during the term of the next government!
The development of the U.K.'s New Model Institution for Technology Education bears some resemblance to our Greenfields scenario, although with initial seed funding from regional public and private sources. Instead of launching with a startup student cohort paying full fees, the institution hired a small Design Cohort of 30 "student engineers" in Sept 2018, to prototype their proposed new T&L approach, and then in Sept 2020 planned to admit a second Pioneer Cohort of 200 students who were to be offered a generous scholarship enticement (delayed until 2021 by the COVID pandemic). The earliest MVP cohort will thus be in Fall 2022.
As sensible as this may be as an Innovation Journey in our Higher Education context, it’s hard to see this working with a typical provincial or state government as a sponsor. The expectation will be for a cohort of full fee-paying students from day one, and a reasonable ramp-up to reach critical mass for viability in 4-5 years. The hubbub over the low initial take-up at the fledgling l'Université de l'Ontario français – "innovative, daring and agile" – illustrates the need for a gradual ramp-up outside of unrealistic public expectations, .
To address this challenge, the Academic Strategy in the Greenfields University scenario – and the seed institution from which that scenario is derived – could apply several approaches to improve the feasibility of rapid innovation cycles in Incubation and Acceleration:
Since Greenfields University’s mission statement includes both “Leadership in Emerging Graduate Attributes” and “New Partnership Models with Regional Employers”, Greenfields could prototype the new learning outcomes and experiences in regional workplaces first, allowing for more rapid prototyping cycles outside of the public eye.
The new teaching and learning approaches could be tested first with workplace partners for developing both Sustainability capability (an Acceleration activity) and Workplace Innovation capability (an Incubation activity)
These activities could also help Greenfields in achieving other aspects of its instructional plan, such as exploring new Work-Integrated Learning models.
In parallel, Greenfields could address more traditional outcomes by leveraging existing instruction currently offered by traditional universities in the host city, and gradually adapting those offerings to new instructional models required for the Greenfields’ institutional strategy (either in partnership with those institutions or replacing those institutional offerings using new amalgams of MOOC content, workplace learning, etc.).
This disruption in the traditional Teaching and Learning supply chain could also attract future institutional partners who might seek to leverage Greenfields' strategic innovation capabilities to support their own Acceleration of innovation.
Finally, Discovery activities in Digital Transformation were recommended in the Academic Strategy as one of the other targeted Emerging Learning Outcomes for the institution. This is another area where Greenfields’ own operations could provide “Living Lab” exemplars, by including within the Digital Transformation agenda a commitment to innovative infrastructure for sustaining end-to-end strategic innovation.
Postscript: We have recently applied the concept of distinctive capabilities for Discovery, Incubation and Acceleration activities in an exploration of strategic innovation within the teaching and learning strategy for another higher education institution. The strategic goal being explored involves the increasing knowledge intensity of emerging work – and workforces – in a variety of professional and vocation domains, and the institutional approaches which might prepare graduates with the capabilities to meet those challenges.
We were able to frame the current 'state of the art' in understanding those changes and preparing graduates for them using the Discovery - Incubation - Acceleration categorization. This has highlighted the institutional decisions needed around emphasizing only Acceleration competency – for those areas where other institutions have done the groundwork, as in the Heartland State scenario – or potentially choosing to complement that by developing further competency in Discovery and Incubation, to take on a larger role in strategic innovation for teaching and learning.
This experience has provided another data point supporting the idea that insights from corporate research on sustaining innovation can be of value as we explore strategic innovation in higher education teaching and learning.
Anahita Baregheh is an Associate Professor at Nipissing University’s School of Business and Research Director for the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada.
Thomas Carey is co-Principal Catalyst for the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, Executive-in-Residence with the Monash University Faculty of Arts and a former Associate Vice-President at the University of Waterloo