Comments on: innovators and the university (the d-school)

By: Felicia D.

Felicia D. — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:25:36 +0000

Comments
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By: T. Boult

T. Boult — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 11:37:30 +0000

Nice three part post. Should probably separate the two issues how/if universities do/drive innovation and how well they prepare future innovators. In both areas, I think you missed a big piece of the problems of academics and B-school, D-schools and such — they are self-limiting by their self-imposed specializations and silos. Innovation today requires not one point of view but a general multi-disciplinary view of problems and alternatives and a broad team to turn the rough ideas into the real innovation. I don’t see it as something any silo will really solve; it takes a team. And teaching it takes an equally multi-disciplinary view, with practice not just theory. This is why the new Bachelor of Innovation(tm) family of degrees at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is a joint effort between engineering and business. (Personally I wanted to see an “School of Innovation”, merging engineering and business, but that was too radical — a joint venture was easier to sell than a true merger. It also would have been nice to get the Psych and Anthropology types involved in the program, but many liberal arts faculty seems to view products, technology and business as impure motivations.)

This is a unique new approach. Its not a degree, its a family of degrees like a BA or BS. Each of the BI majors in business and engineering take their standard major courses, but they also share a common core in innovation related materials including six terms of innovation teaming to get it practiced at many levels. Each student has a choice of a cross-disciplinary core (more than a minor, less than a major) in either business, technology, globalization or creative communications. The goal is to start early and shape them to embrace innovation, entrepreneurship and the value of diverse views and multi-disciplinary teams. And, to practice innovation with corporate partners solving real problems and writing real proposals while still in school. It is not a B-school, D-school or E-school, is a experiential team-based approach to innovation education. You can find more about it at http://innovation.uccs.edu

By: Rob Kleine

Rob Kleine — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 22:42:06 +0000

Grant – Are you channeling Virginia Postrel in this post? Or … perhaps Kernan & Sommers’ bit about meaning being an aggregate perception of a thing’s attribute and performance characteristics? Or have a completely missed your meaning? rk

By: steve

steve — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:54:52 +0000

Grant’s analysis of the Black & Decker case illustrates my point about the potential of cultural awareness to improve critical thinking more than innovative creativity. Note that B&D did “the right thing for the wrong reason,” so the cultural argument is a critique of the justification for an innovation, not a pointer to greater innovation or more creativity. The payoff to cultural awareness is the same as the payoff to economic or technological awareness, i.e. that innovations with poor justifications turn out more often to be avoidable failures. Critical thinking improves one’s odds.

This case analysis also provides an example of why sociology or social psych is not enough and anthropology is called for: “Status” is a very general construct which in this case gives little guidance. Cultural meanings such as “masculinity” and “professionalism” (and their opposites) are specific to the situation and provide more suitable guides for decision-making.