The Innovation Bugbear

Innovation in the education sector moves at a glacial pace, at best. Why this is so is implied within the graphic below. Innovations happen at the intersection of two of the three components: faster, better and cheaper. A trifecta is rare in the real world and would result in the fabled but elusive "killer app" that so many businesses seek.The problem is that all three of these are hard for market-leading, established schools to pull off. Their investment--financial and emotional--in the status quo is just too big. And then there is the whole problem of "teaching elephants to dance." Start-ups and smaller schools hungry to move up in their markets could innovate, but lack the standing to do so. Seriously disrupting the education paradigm would scare away too many customers.This locks in a certain inertia that  perpetuates the accepted X students to Y teachers in Z classrooms formula for a school. In future posts, we will pose generative questions aimed at helping boards and administrators get past this trap. We believe that the answers you come up with will be the catalysts innovation needs to happen in our sector.