As we start our book talk about the Innovator’s Mindset next week, we thought we would warm up by blogging about our personal definitions of innovation. Here is my attempt but make sure to jump on over and check out the other posts as well.
It seemed like an easy prompt at the time: define innovation. I know we see the word used so often both in education and the world all around that it’s hard not to stumble upon an example whether it be a story about the iPhone to how to use alligator clips for anything but a clip.
Does innovation always mean a new idea? Can it be built upon our learning in the past? I went back to a post I had written a few years back after visiting one of the most innovative places I know: the very brief DigiPlaySpace at Bell Lightbox every March/April. I think many times innovation in my practice does look like bending the rules, taking an idea or a concept and adapting it, changing it, tweaking it, remixing it. I’m challenged more and more that maybe innovation does look like something completely different but at it’s core are human truths: the need to feel like you belong, to communicate, to play and experiment.
Maybe it doesn’t matter as much what I see innovation as, whether it is a completely new idea or something remixed from the past but rather that we are finding new ideas to engage in the learning process for kids.
“Innovation can come from either ‘invention’ (something totally new) or ‘iteration’ (a change of something that already exists), but if it does not meet the idea of ‘new and better’, it is not innovative.”
Chapter 1 – The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros
Make sure to make your way over to the other blogs
as well as to ossemooc to read more ideas and reflections. I’m sure my definition will change over the week.
Miss Kit Kat 
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