I sit writing this blog after having attended a session with Ian Jukes as a part of a Superintendent Conference provided by the Mississippi Department of Education. Mr. Jukes did a masterful job of describing the concept of Disruptive Innovation. Clayton Christiansen originally coined disruptive innovation as a business term. On his website claytonchristensen.com, Christensen describes Disruptive Innovation as, “a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.”
The market place is scattered with the remnants of companies that did not understand the concept of Disruptive Innovation. Much a kin to the work of Jim Collins and Morten Hansen detailed in the books Good to Great and Great by Choice, companies or organizations that do not remain informed and nimble enough to react smartly to change do not tend to last beyond the collision of innovation and a loss of usefulness.
When I taught high school biology, one of the topics I taught my students was the old axiom of “adapt, migrate, or die.” That is, when conditions change to the point of becoming threatening to existence, biological organisms have three choices. They must adapt to meet the challenges caused by the change, or they must migrate to an environment that is more conducive to their ability to maintain stasis or life. If the organism is unable or unwilling to do either, then the hard facts of life are certain death.
We have seen this scenario play out time and again with large companies and even whole industries. Examples abound, from records, to rotary phones, and on to the U.S. Postal Service. It would seem that the concept of Disruptive Innovation is all too real.
What about the connection to education? Has the enterprise of public schooling come to be the next one to face the music when it comes to Disruptive Innovation? Ian Jukes makes a compelling case that I see being all too close to home as an educator.
The message it would seem is that if educators want to continue to teach and lead schools in the industrial model of schooling that has been the predominate way of doing things in schools for the past 150 years, then for these educators, there is-
What will be needed is for these educators to be prepared to become obsolete!
Like the great camera giant Kodak, there is no reason to believe that the traditional model of public schooling is to be immune from Disruptive Innovation. Whether driven by misinformed politicians, or well-intentioned educators with their proverbial heads in the sand, we see an ever increasing number of students and adults turning the channel on public schooling every day.
What is one to do? Do we throw our hands up? I would advocate against a premature surrender. As radical as the idea of free public schooling was once, I believe that the American spirit is alive and well, and is more than capable of innovating (adapting) itself out of this tar pit.
It will first take an awareness of the dangers. Then it will require a guiding coalition to recognize and accept the challenge to tackle the pitfalls and trip wires that lie in wait. From there, it will take a deep dive into asking ourselves as a nation, what skills will our students need in the next 15, 20, or 50 years. The path to innovation will also require us to confront how the accountability systems we have built for our schools have promoted and even stifled the development of critical skills. Now, with eyes on the clearly articulated opportunities that students will have in the future, we must then set out to map out by backwards design to where we are in the present.
This change must start one individual, one school board, one school district, and one state at a time.
Will you be that one that begins the cycle of innovation?
I would love to hear your thoughts…
The market place is scattered with the remnants of companies that did not understand the concept of Disruptive Innovation. Much a kin to the work of Jim Collins and Morten Hansen detailed in the books Good to Great and Great by Choice, companies or organizations that do not remain informed and nimble enough to react smartly to change do not tend to last beyond the collision of innovation and a loss of usefulness.
When I taught high school biology, one of the topics I taught my students was the old axiom of “adapt, migrate, or die.” That is, when conditions change to the point of becoming threatening to existence, biological organisms have three choices. They must adapt to meet the challenges caused by the change, or they must migrate to an environment that is more conducive to their ability to maintain stasis or life. If the organism is unable or unwilling to do either, then the hard facts of life are certain death.
We have seen this scenario play out time and again with large companies and even whole industries. Examples abound, from records, to rotary phones, and on to the U.S. Postal Service. It would seem that the concept of Disruptive Innovation is all too real.
What about the connection to education? Has the enterprise of public schooling come to be the next one to face the music when it comes to Disruptive Innovation? Ian Jukes makes a compelling case that I see being all too close to home as an educator.
The message it would seem is that if educators want to continue to teach and lead schools in the industrial model of schooling that has been the predominate way of doing things in schools for the past 150 years, then for these educators, there is-
- No need to explore new partnerships in learning with students,
- No need to be attuned to teaching students how to utilize Learning Intentions and Success Criteria,
- No need to teach and model for students the effective use of high quality instructional feedback,
- No need to understand and to teach students to harness the power of formative and ipsative assessment,
- No need to utilize and teach the “soft” critical skills of the next century which include teamwork, perseverance, problem solving, etc.,
- No need to develop collaborative learning networks within and across schools to study, critique, and grow the profession of teaching and leading in schools.
What will be needed is for these educators to be prepared to become obsolete!
Like the great camera giant Kodak, there is no reason to believe that the traditional model of public schooling is to be immune from Disruptive Innovation. Whether driven by misinformed politicians, or well-intentioned educators with their proverbial heads in the sand, we see an ever increasing number of students and adults turning the channel on public schooling every day.
What is one to do? Do we throw our hands up? I would advocate against a premature surrender. As radical as the idea of free public schooling was once, I believe that the American spirit is alive and well, and is more than capable of innovating (adapting) itself out of this tar pit.
It will first take an awareness of the dangers. Then it will require a guiding coalition to recognize and accept the challenge to tackle the pitfalls and trip wires that lie in wait. From there, it will take a deep dive into asking ourselves as a nation, what skills will our students need in the next 15, 20, or 50 years. The path to innovation will also require us to confront how the accountability systems we have built for our schools have promoted and even stifled the development of critical skills. Now, with eyes on the clearly articulated opportunities that students will have in the future, we must then set out to map out by backwards design to where we are in the present.
This change must start one individual, one school board, one school district, and one state at a time.
Will you be that one that begins the cycle of innovation?
I would love to hear your thoughts…
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