A number of group members have asked me to dedicate space to the topic of innovation in higher education. With this in mind, I have started putting together a number of posts and resources that deal directly with this very slippery concept. In this post, I speak with Chris Finlay, the Director of Design for Student Experience at the Business Innovation Factory. His current role is to use methods of design thinking to understand the undergraduate student experience in order to find opportunities for systems level innovation in higher education.
KCH: If an organization has little to no formal systems in place to foster innovation, where should they begin? What are the first steps?
CF: Step one is to not be overwhelmed by the task ahead. We humans have a strange tendency to think in extremes, particularly when we are projecting ourselves into an unknown future. People often worry that they will be expected to create the next Google or Apple. And more than figuring out how to be that successful, people want to avoid creating the next New Coke or Segway. The truth is that most value creation is generally somewhere in between those extremes and people would do well to recognize that. We need to remember that we don’t have to hit a home run every time, and that the process can be manageable and still successful. And it can be. An excellent guiding philosophy for any organization to temper their worries and get started on a path to deepening their capacity to innovate is to “think big, start small, scale fast”.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Innovation, Design Thinking, and Higher Education: Interview with Chris Finlay « Higher Education Management Group
Author: Keith Hampson
