The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity

by George Couros

I’m defining innovation as a way of thinking that creates something new and better.

Too many of the "right answers" seems obscurely abstract.

Innovation is not always a “physical” creation.

I would say that innovation is always an idea as would the author per his own definition. An innovative physical creation is the invention, which I wonder if that was what the author meant to say?

What is an example of a practice that you consider to be innovative? How is it new or better than what you had before?

Election of Student Leaders.

How can you create opportunities for innovation in your leadership? In your teaching? In your learning?

Leadership? I do not know. Teaching? I do all the time, via surrender of control. Learning? I do not even understand how to consider this question. It is good and I will reflect for a while.

What has changed in our world today that not only makes innovation easier to do, but is also necessary for our students?

Global community.

The Innovator’s Mindset Belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed so that they lead to the creation of new and better ideas.

Innovating in our schools requires a different type of thinking, one that doesn’t focus on ideas that are “outside of the box” but those that allow us to be innovative despite budgetary constraints. In other words, we need to learn to innovate inside the box.

Having the freedom to fail is important to innovation. But even more important to the process are the traits of resiliency and grit. Resiliency is the ability to come back after a defeat or unsuccessful attempt. Grit is resolve or strength of character.

But accepting failure as a final outcome, especially when it comes to our kids, is not something we should ever embrace.

At present, I disagree with this as the desired outcome of said failure is to have learned something new and that is its own virtue. I wonder if I will be persuaded to agree with this premise as I read further.

What are some examples of innovation that you have seen within constraints, both inside and outside of schools? What questions do you think are vital to understanding those who we serve in education? If you were to start a school from scratch, what would it look like? How do we take what we currently have to create a better education system for our entire community?

1. Inside school, signs in the halls of Agnew. Outside of school, Apple's night mode. 2. What is a student's passion and/vs. talent? 3. I have an overly lengthly answer here, but reintroducing Classical Education with a redesign that fits in the modern era fused with a lot of what works in Japan. 4. We all improve our corner of the universal and seek the like-minded who share our values.

there are tremendous demands placed on teachers today and, too often, the narrative I hear from so many administrators is, “Teachers don’t want to change!” My belief is not that teachers don’t want to change, but they sometimes lack clear guidance and support to make the desired change.

I disagree. There are definitely teachers thatg don't want to change.

What risk might you take to change learning experiences? How might you create an environment that fosters risk-taking? How do you exhibit the Innovator’s mindset in the learning and work that you do currently?

1.) I am unsure what NEW risks I should take. As of now, I think that I will revisit some of my written directions to where I can create the option for more student input/ideas to invent similar outcomes. 2.) I already do. It is breaking students of their badly learned "safe" habits that is the challenge. 3.) Greatly.

To quote Steve Jobs, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Questions for Discussion How do you build relationships with individuals in your district, school, and classroom? How do you empower others to take risks? Examples? How do you create opportunities for your school community to have learning driven by their personal interests?

1. District- Time and effort. School- Time and effort. Classroom- Intentionally. 2. Invite and reassure them. I literally say, "try something and let's see what happens." 3. Intentionally.

Why are we okay that management hasn’t seen innovation in one hundred or fifty years, but we demand innovation in every other aspect of our lives? —Jamie Notter

Right‽

New ideas start with understanding the needs of those you serve. When I first became a principal, I did not try to mirror the ideas and practices of the principals who had come before me. Instead, I thought, “If I were a teacher in this school, what would I expect of my principal?” Thinking about the learning environment from that perspective also helped me empathize with being a student in the school and a parent in the community. For example, as a teacher, I felt frustrated when I attended meetings that seemed to go nowhere and went too long. So to respect the time of others, I made sure meetings were shorter and that we spent more time learning than we did on things that could have been simply emailed. Is having a shorter meeting innovative? No. But trying to put yourself in the place of those you serve is where innovation begins.

It is imperative that we teach learners how to be self-directed and guide their own learning, rather than rely on others to simply engage them. Bill Ferriter separates the idea of engagement and empowerment nicely. He states, “Engaging students means getting kids excited about our content, interests, and curricula.” Empowering students “means giving kids the knowledge and skills to pursue their passions, interests, and future.”[44]

If you had to choose between compliant, engaged, or empowered, which word would you want to define your students?

Thomas Friedman’s article “How to Get a Job at Google.”[48] In it, he highlighted five hiring attributes that the company desires in its employees. “Compliance” isn’t listed. Take a look at what is: Cognitive Ability: ”The ability to process on the fly.” Leadership: Emergent leadership versus traditional leadership. As a leader, do you recognize the times when you need to relinquish power? Humility: The ability to say, “I don’t know,” and be able to step back and embrace better ideas. Ownership: Understanding that an organizational problem is also your problem, and working together to solve it is crucial. Expertise: This is listed as the least important attribute, because thinking you already know the answer can keep you from exploring new options. Friedman closes with a note to which schools should pay close attention: “In an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it [Google] also cares about a lot of soft skills—leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability, and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.”

Vision without execution is hallucination. — Thomas Edison

Author and human behavior researcher Tom Rath notes in his book, Strengths Finder 2.0, that, “[P]eople who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general.”

If your manager primarily ignores you, the chances of you being actively disengaged are 40%. If your manager primarily focuses on your weaknesses the chances of you being actively disengaged are 22%. If your manager primarily focuses on your strengths the chances of you being actively disengaged are 1%.

Learners are the driver, and technology is the accelerator.

Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler. —Albert Einstein

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. —Hans Hofmann

Guy Kawasaki explained why less can be more when it comes to communication: They should teach students how to communicate in five-sentence emails and with ten-slide PowerPoint presentations.

When educators and organizations feel overwhelmed by the number of requirements they have to meet, the focus in classrooms tends to be on covering curriculum, rather than focusing on the learning and exploring concepts in depth. If we aren’t intentional, we may promote confusion and burnout, instead of inspiring innovation and deep learning.

educator Bernajean Porter’s talks about the idea of moving from literate, to adaptive, to transformative. Using the iPad as an example, here is how those three areas break down: If I am literate, I am able to manipulate a device. I know how to turn it on, work with it, and turn apps on. If I am using the device in an adaptive way, I am doing something with this new technology that I used to do in low-tech way. For example, I am taking notes on the iPad or reading a textbook on the device. If I am using the device in a transformative way, I am doing something with the device that I could not do before, such as creating video, connecting with people around the world through a blog, or sharing items with other students in the classroom at any time, from any place.

Creativity is where we start to think differently, and innovation is where creativity comes to life.

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. —John Maeda

Dean Shareski offers a few insights on how blogging develops better educators. Thousands of other blogging educators could echo similar words. In fact, I’ve yet to hear anyone who has stuck with blogging suggest it’s been anything less than essential to their growth and improvement… If you look at the promise of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) that our schools have invested thousands, more likely millions, to achieve, blogs accomplish much of the same things. The basic idea of the PLC is to have teachers share practice/data and work in teams to make improvements. A good blog does this and more. While the data may not be school specific, great bloggers know how to share data and experience that is both relevant and universal, so any reader can contribute and create discussion.[93] Putting an emphasis on self-assessment benefits the individual learner, and when shared openly on a blog, it benefits other educators as well.

In Part I, we defined innovation, discussed why it is important in education, and identified the characteristics of the Innovator’s mindset. In Part II, we focused on laying the groundwork for innovation in education by developing relationships, modeling what we seek, empowering our people, and creating a vision for learning with our community, rather than for it. In Part III, we looked at how to unleash talent in our school communities and create the conditions that allow for innovation to flourish.

As the old saying goes, you do not fatten a pig by weighing it.

We can be so much more as educators, a fact that Erica Goldson shared in her very powerful high school valedictorian speech in 2010: I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer—not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition, a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I ha...

For schools to do that, educators will need to unleash that talent and hunger for learning in themselves first. If we only teach students the curriculum, we have failed them.

I am thankful for my mom, and I am constantly reminded, by her and by my dad’s example, that the biggest barrier to innovation is our own way of thinking. I am also reminded of the biggest game changer—and it isn’t technology. The biggest game changers in education are, and always will be, the educators who embrace the Innovator’s mindset. These teachers and educational leaders look at change as an opportunity, not an obstacle, and they constantly ask: “What is best for this learner?” With this mindset, they provide new and better learning experiences for our students every single day.