One of the most important things my team at Penn GSE works on is our ongoing endeavor to understand and theorize education innovation ecosystems, even as we build one. My years in edtech (see my last blog, if you missed it) and my own experience wearing many hats as technologist, academic/researcher, investor and entrepreneur, have convinced me that the major players in the field cannot “go it alone” if they truly hope to make an impact on the “adaptive problems” that beset education.
Entrepreneurs, investors, practitioners and researchers together constitute the major players in an education innovation ecosystem as we define it. But how does an innovation ecosystem engender durable, transformative connections between researchers and the other key players in the ecosystem? How can it help make individuals’ insights add up to something greater than their parts, something with real impact for learners and educators?
In the spirit of sharing my ideas and my work I want to take just a moment to share my thoughts on the ideas of an education innovation ecosystem.
The EdTech Innovation Ecosystem
An edtech innovation ecosystem refers to the collaborative efforts of key stakeholders to develop, adopt, and scale new products and services intended to improve teaching and learning. The individuals and organizations engaged in these joint efforts—including students, practitioners, entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers—represent a variety of skill sets and priorities, and their roles are often fluid. In the ecosystem, research of several kinds – e.g., market research, empirical studies – is done in conjunction with other stakeholders in the environment. As a result, innovative ideas and new offerings are understood within the broader context of the education market rather than viewed in isolation.
By definition, an innovation ecosystem cannot be a single entity. It cannot be a stand-alone venture, nor can it be a nonprofit or for-profit entity that facilitates the larger ecosystem. The ecosystem is an entity that transcends individual organizations or institutions and yet is constituted by the individuals in those institutions, their ties to one another, and the resources they exchange.
Collaboration, Efficiency Conditions, and Lead Orgs
We believe that innovation ecosystems arise out of several converging trends. First, collaboration is becoming more widely studied and documented, particularly in management and administration studies, and people now believe that collaboration may be not only more effective, but also more efficient than tackling complex problems alone. Second, specific efficiency conditions such as budget shortfalls and mandates such as the Common Core State Standards spur the creation of innovation ecosystems by forcing districts and state systems to innovate around economic constraints. Finally, a variety of lead organizations such as the edtech publication EdSurge (full disclosure: I am an advisor to the company), edtech incubators ImagineK12 and EDSi (full disclosure: I am the Chair of the Board), and the DoE’s Office of Innovation and Improvement are all working to initiate and sustain dialogue across groups. They host yearly conferences, competitions, and summits, for instance. But these lead organizations also perform the important function of both raising awareness of, and cheerleading for, important efforts within edtech (e.g., the DILA awards, jointly run by EdSurge and the bipartisan nonprofit Digital Promise).
Despite the differences resulting from the type of organization at the helm, stakeholders’ priorities, and the size and maturity of the network, we think edtech innovation ecosystems have several commonalities.
Key resources. To function, an innovation ecosystem requires several key resources, including funding, human capital, and material goods such as hardware and software technology, and an environment that rewards creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Outcomes. The goal of an ecosystem is to ease the production of products, processes, or services to improve teaching and learning. It does this directly, by helping students or practitioners, and indirectly, by facilitating the processes, delivery, logistics, and data management involved in education. Less tangible but equally critical is that ecosystems foster enduring, meaningful interactions between and among stakeholders of the ecosystem.
Metrics of Effectiveness. The goal of most new ventures nurtured by an innovation ecosystem is to achieve financial growth and profitability (or sustainability, in the case of a nonprofit venture) and to create a positive impact on teaching and learning. Ideally, ecosystems also function by helping to winnow out ventures that (for whatever reasons) are not viable.
The Role of Research. Research is both an input and an output of the ecosystem and can include academic research, market research, and applied research related to product development and efficacy. Knowledge created and exchanged between players in the ecosystem can include experiential knowledge, knowledge gained from traditional academic research, and knowledge directly related to consumer demand and product performance (market research). Determining a product’s efficacy is complicated, though, since we tend to disagree (vehemently…) about what constitutes desirable outcomes in education or how to measure them. This is yet another reason why the inclusion of researchers is critical to the overall success of an innovation ecosystem. While the researcher’s role in the ecosystem is difficult to assess, we believe it is one of the major differentiators in an education ecosystem.
My team is deeply interested in how individuals and constituent groups work together to make innovation happen in education. We believe that our evolving definition is “the” definition that will focus the conversation around education innovation ecosystems. However, we continue to wrestle with key questions such as how the boundaries of an innovation ecosystem are defined, how contextual factors and individuals’ decision-making influence ecosystem function, how researchers can be meaningfully integrated into the ecosystem, and even the best methods to study the ecosystem. Your thoughts and feedback will help drive the conversation and refine the definition.
(with Cat McManus, Penn GSE doctoral student, and Rachel Ebby-Rosin, contributing authors)
