Innovation
We’ve been talking all year on the committee about innovation and ways to support that on campus. The University of Southern California has started a new institute for innovation, the USC Stevens Institute, to support innovation across departments. The idea is to have a university-wide resource to support innovators, not just in terms of funding, but in terms of helping innovators make connections.
Business Week interviewed the head of the institute, Krisztina Holly, who comments:
It’s about empowering the innovators and getting them connected with the right people—and creating a community from within and also outside the university with experts from business. It’s about having a shared sense of enterprise.
She talks about the value of reaching across departments including art, music, film, etc. As she points out, “That’s what’s so cool about innovation; it’s the common language between academia and the marketplace.” The institute isn’t just focused on business projects, but on community projects as well.
She shared some tentative survey results which found that over 50 percent of their students have had an idea while in college that they thought would make a good business.
It strikes me that having some sort of support for innovative projects at a high school would be a great idea as well. An innovation club? A innovation subset of the Vision committee? Wouldn’t it be great to have a nationwide or statewide “Institute for Innovation in Education?”
Any ideas on what we could do on campus to incorporate this concept?
April 7, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
I like the idea of an innovation group within the vision committee and of an innovation club. So many people have great ideas that never get off the ground and into a development stage. Creating something innovative would serve our students well in their search for finding something that will set them apart in the college application process as well. Harvard has already turned down students with perfect SAT scores this year. Schools are looking for more than just academic aptitude. They want to know that students are passionate about learning. I am sending this from my cell phone as we are on the road so forgive the typos! one other thought. I was just reading the April 9th Newsweek issue about cancer research. Journalist John Alter makes the point that we aren’t making as much progress in some areas of cancer research because we value competition rather than collaboration – yet another indication that we need to emphasize collaboration. It is snowing on the bluebonnets on I 35 near Dallas!