What Is The Importance Of Innovation Education?
Today is the first day of the first semester for Australian University students…
Some are taking innovation subjects, yet the vast majority are not!
This article goes into the importance of innovation education by featuring the perspectives of two individuals who are close to the topic (pun intended) and subject matter.
One is an Associate Professor of Enterprise Dynamics at UniSA Business who will talk about preparing the next generation for a rapidly changing world of work, where new technologies and business models are constantly emerging, and the rate of change is increasing, by teaching students to be flexible, adaptive, creative, and entrepreneurial so that they can design their own careers and contribute to society through the ventures they start and/or manage.
The other is also an Associate Professor and Program Director of Innovation and Enterprise at Flinders University who will talk about how innovation education helps us to learn new things, think creatively, and be proactive in solving problems rather than being stuck in a world where we are scared to make mistakes and maintain the status quo.
By exploring these two viewpoints, we hope to provide an understanding of why innovation education is crucial for individuals and society as a whole.
Let’s get into it…
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Innovation education is increasingly important in today’s rapidly changing world.
The world of work is changing.
We have moved away from an era of stability in employment to a time where today’s younger generations are likely to experience many career shifts.
There is an upsurge in new technologies, that alter the perception of and the relationships between a business and its customers, suppliers, and the communities within which they operate.
For instance, what a bookstore is and how it engages with its customers, workforce, and society has been forever changed by the internet and the growth of online stores such as Amazon.
These changes are not just affecting attitudes and expectations but also open opportunities in new business models and ways of serving customers.
Education has a huge role to play in preparing the next generation, as the only constant, as the adage goes, is change.
Business conditions always shift.
Past, present and future businesses have, and always will, need to be aware of change.
For the benefit of employees, the entrepreneur, and investors, whether they be families, banks, venture capitalists, or shareholders, businesses, from sole traders to multi-national corporations, not-for-profit ventures to governments, need to be ready to re-think and innovate.
Today, if there is a difference, it is the rate of change that is escalating.
However, for all these points the most powerful reason for innovation education rests with the responsibility of educators to assist those that innovate to find a market position that can support their ambition and their business.
It is not just a question of preparing students to be in business but to be in business with a unique and valuable product/service offering.
Innovation is needed to find that space in a market.
For all these reasons education needs to prepare students to be flexible, adaptive, creative, and entrepreneurial so as they can become designers of their own careers and become valuable contributors to society through the ventures they start and/or manage.
Innovation education sows the seeds and develops the soft skills essential to creating and identifying emerging opportunities in this changing world of work.
Allan O’Connor, Professor Enterprise Dynamics — UniSA Business.
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What if we reframe the question to “why is innovation education NOT important?”
It is not important in a world in which we all learn the same things in a standard curriculum and end up doing standardized tasks in similar jobs.
In that world, we view learning as correctly answering multiple-choice questions, where we can only pick the correct answer and are punished if our answer is assessed as wrong.
We all gather expertise from current knowledge and once we are experts, we have achieved our goal and stopped learning as we know it all (but for the rest of our lives we are anxious that we might be an imposter, not knowing as much as we pretend to know).
Our jobs are predictable and repeatable (from 9–5) and provide us with the average salary, just enough to feed our two kids and pay our mortgage.
We lack purpose and achieve little impact, and we do not need hard things like empathy and creative thinking to come up with new ideas.
Instead, we are happy with the current status quo.
It is a world where we are stuck in our rivers of thinking and do not like to be challenged.
We do not rethink our point of view and are reactive to problems.
We give up if we cannot do things.
It is a world where we are scared to make mistakes and failure leads to people judging us as no good.
Would you like to live in such a world?
If not, then you would agree that innovation education is important.
Bert Verhoeven, Senior Lecturer and Program Director Innovation and Enterprise, Flinders University.
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Hopefully, it’s clear, that innovation education is a vital component of any modern education system.
As highlighted by both O’Connor and Verhoeven, innovation education not only helps individuals develop the skills necessary to thrive in an ever-changing world, but it also has the potential to drive societal and economic progress.
In a time when the world is facing numerous complex challenges, we need a new generation of innovators who are equipped with the tools and mindset to tackle these issues head-on.
Investing in innovation education can create a brighter future for all.
