How-To On Building a Culture of Innovation

Across the country, committed educators and organizational leaders at every level are working hard to design and implement new approaches that they believe can be more effective for students than those we currently have in place.
“Innovation culture is critical to the future of education,” said Lisa Duty, partner at The Learning Accelerator (TLA) and, lead author of, So You Think You Want to Innovate? Emerging Lessons and a New Tool for State and District Leaders Working to Build a Culture of Innovation. “We need to learn to thrive on building and testing new solutions to education’s most challenging problems,” said Lisa.
TLA is a nonprofit organization supporting the implementation of high-quality blended learning in school districts and states across America. In partnership with 2Revolutions (2Rev), a national education design lab that designs, launches and supports Future of Learning models and helps catalyze the conditions within which they can thrive, they created the framework for building and sustaining a culture of innovation within education organizations.
“Everyone talks about the need for more innovation in education,” said Todd Kern, lead author and 2Revolutions Founder and Principal. “But the reality is that this is incredibly complex work. Our goal with this collaboration was to give organizational leaders handles to better understand where they are today and how to build the innovation culture that’s needed to enable radical progress on behalf of kids and families.”
Analyzing what innovation culture means in the context of education, the framework describes why it is essential and features a comprehensive self-assessment tool that provides guideposts for education leaders to find where they are on the path to building a culture of innovation.
This framework and tool should be valuable for anyone in education interested in exploring the facets of an innovation culture, with a special focus on the organizational level. This includes: state education agencies, school districts, regional service centers, foundations, state membership organizations, and for non-profit education organizations working at the state and district level.

Download So You Think You Want to Innovate?