The Mimetic Barrier to Innovation
A current strategy client went to great lengths during their interview with us and at other points in the process to emphasize how vital innovation would be for the school's future. The same client rejects ideas if we cannot produce examples of similar schools doing the same things. "Give us something innovative to copy," seems to be their fondest desire. At best, this mimetic behavior leads to relatively small, incremental improvements rather than paradigm-changing disruptions.
Institutions in the education sector have a profound mimetic tendency; in fact, one could say that mimesis (see David Perrell's excellent lecture series with Jonathan Bi on Rene Girard for a thorough unpacking of Mimetic Theory) is a defining attribute that distinguishes everything in the industry from kindergarten to graduate school. It is also a significant reason the sector has so little real innovation.
We hear something similar from school leaders who say emphatically that the private, independent school business model is broken (we disagree, by the way) and then reject anything that seriously upends the student + teachers + classrooms = school formula that has been in place since at least Sumerian times. Maybe the problem is that innovation is risky, tantamount in education to experimenting on students. So we have a perfect Catch 22: leaders know that they need to innovate if the field is to thrive, but little gets the green light unless it is tried and true. This contrasts with what one often sees in other industries, where the strategic goal is to do something different from what rivals and peers do.
In Girard's Mimetic Theory, the motive is imitative, to mirror highly regarded others, whereas in the education marketplace we suggest the motive is often more about anxiety reduction. It reduces anxiety to do something not too different from what someone else has done. For schools, it gets even better when the "someone else" is a higher-status institution, in which case both imitative and anxiety reduction motives are fulfilled. In short, anxiety spikes when one is out on the proverbial limb, and mimesis minimizes the perceived risk.
No wonder change comes so slowly to the education sector. Some, but not many people, embrace risk and enjoy pushing the innovation envelope. But few wish to tolerate the anxiety and inevitable failures that being truly innovative brings, especially when one's career or children seem to be on the line.