Innovation Ecosystem for
Education
Dominique Foray
OECD/France Workshop on Human
Resources, Education and Innovation
Paris, IEA, 7-8 December 2009
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
A new or
improved
instructional
practice as a
result of
advances in
technologies and
knowledge about
learning
processes and
pedagogy
Incentives/motives
Innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
• Critical role of pecuniary incentives for innovative activity
• The « paradox of open source »: role of non pecuniary
incentives: intellectual challenge, curiosity, enjoyment,
peer recognition, feeeling of achievement
• Individual motives to perform an activity depends upon the
expected, pleasurable consequences (or benefits) and the
intensity of preferences for these benefits
• Extrinsic benefits versus intrinsic benefits
• Questions/problems:
– Extrinsic rewards may crowd out intrinsic motives and so
reduce the overall level of effort
– Productivity/quality effects of different types of
incentives (stimulation of creativity vs. incremental, less
risky approach)
– Individual’s motives may also affect productivity by
driving/inhibiting intermediate behaviors (e.g.
information sharing)
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Competition
and
market
incentives/motives
Innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Standards and
accountability
pressure
• Pressure from competition: the market
mechanism provides higher payoffs to
those firms that are more efficient and
whose products are most closely adapted
to the wishes of consumers. On some
markets, the firm must innovate or die
• Pressure from increased accountability to
engage in systematic continuous
improvements in the quality of the
educational experience of students and to
subject themselves to the discipline of
measuring their success by the metric of
students’academic performance
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Working harder!
Changing structures
Giving the same
instruction
in much
larger quantities
Competition
and
market
Incentives/motives
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
• Incentives/motives to increase
performances do not target
innovation by teachers in schools\
•Most public education systems
reward teachers for different
orders of conditions, no one
which is related to innovative
capacity and student
performance
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Incentives/motives and
expectations must be
aligned among teachers,
administrators and
students
Internal accountability
precedes external
accountability
Incentives/motives
Incentives/motives must be
explicitely designed to :
-Tell people that the best
way to repond to increased
pressure is innovation
innovation
-Minimize crowding out
problems
-Maximize
productivity/quality effects
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
-Avoid inhibiting « efficient »
intermediate behaviors
Competition
and
market
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Competition
and
market
Incentives/motives
Capabilities
innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Standards and
accountability
pressure
• The effect of incentives is contingent
on the capacity of schools and
individuals to receive the message
the incentive carries, to translate it
into a concrete and effective course
of action and to execute the action
• Capabilities : the
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
2A
Competition
and
market
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
knowledge
innovation
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Centrality of schools
and school systems to
provide support and
capacity in response
to demand for
accountability and
innovation
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Capabilities
Access to
knowledge
innovation
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Attitude
• Epistemic culture (research demand side
problem)
– Practitioners do not necessarily believe that
the educational problems they are facing in the
course of their professional life can be solved
by inquiry, by evidence and by science
– Uncertainty about what sort of knowledge is
needed for effective teaching (Talis survey)
• Risks associated with innovation are always an
obstacle: risk of failure, wasting time,
expenditures, criticism
– Innovation and assessment problem
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Knowledge
• Educational science: the hardest science
of all
– « We do our science under conditions that
physical scientists find intolerable »
– Still a missing link (or a weakest link):
educational engineering
• Communities of practices
– Horizontal networks as a powerful mechanism
to produce knowledge and to support people
engaged in innovation (non pecuniary
incentives)
– The ethic of atomized teaching – teachers
practicing as individuals with individual styles
– is very strong (model of solo practice)
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Capabilities
Access to
knowledge
Innovation
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
GPT
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
Standards and
accountability
pressure
GPT
• Horizontal propagation throughout the economy and
innovational complementarities between the major
inventions and the « co-invention of applications »
– The basic inventions generate new opportunities for
developing applications in particular sectors.
– Reciprocally, application co-invention increases the size
of the general technology market and improves the
economic return on invention activities relating to it.
• Dynamic feedback loops: When things evolve favourably, a
long-term dynamic develops, consisting of large-scale
investments in research and innovation whose social and
private marginal rates of return attain high levels
• Is the education sector becoming a central « user sector »
in the dynamics of the GPT?
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
I believe that the
motion picture is
destined to
revolutionize our
educational
system and that in
a few years it will
supplant largely, if
not entirely, the
use of textbooks
But none of these
technologies have had
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire
en Economie
et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
a major
impact
I think the computer
will blow up the school.
That is the school defined as
something where there are classes,
teachers running exams,
people structured in groups by age,
following a curricvulum, all of that.
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT
250
Educational related technologies
growth
0.50%
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Education– CEMI
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation
Share (right axis)
2004
2002
2000
1998
0.00%
1996
0
1994
0.10%
1992
50
1990
0.20%
1988
100
1986
0.30%
1984
150
1982
0.40%
1980
200
Firms with educational
technologies
800
4000
700
3500
600
3000
500
2500
400
2000
300
1500
200
1000
100
500
0
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Firms (>1)
1995
1996
1997
Firms (5+)
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
Firms (Right axis)
2003
2004
2005
New firms
500
50%
400
40%
300
30%
200
20%
100
10%
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
Education Entry (all firms)
1996
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
1997
1998
1999
Education Entry (new firms)
2000
2001
Share
2002
2003
0%
2004
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Diffusion/
operational
efficiency
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Best
practices
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Diffusion/
operational
efficiency
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Evaluation
evidence
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Best
practices
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Diffusion/
operational
efficiency
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT
Institutions and
infrastructure to
support
research,
evaluation and
the diffusion of
best practices
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
Incentives/motives
Evaluation
evidence
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Best
practices
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Diffusion/
operational
efficiency
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT
Institutions and
infrastructure to
support
research,
evaluation and
the diffusion of
best practices
Epistemic
culture
Competition
and
market
Risk
management
QUESTIONS ?
Incentives/motives
Evaluation
evidence
Attitude
Standards and
accountability
pressure
Capabilities
Access to
Knowledge
Innovation
Lead users
Best
practices
Science,
research
Communities
of practices
Diffusion/
operational
efficiency
New specialized industry
Collège du Management de la Technologie – CDM
Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation – CEMI
GPT