Wait...what is innovation?

 


Almost two weeks ago, we officially launched iDL. We had researched, planned, scrapped, weighed, planned some more, scrapped again...and arrived at our launch plan. It took precisely two class meetings to run into a dilemma. In a conversation about the purpose of the course, we led discussions on what "inquiry, innovation, and impact" meant. Those three terms appear not only in our school's mission statement, but inquiry, innovation and impact serve also as guide--a Polaris--as we chart the course for iDL.

During the discussion, on class number two, a student raised his hand with an question:
"Wait...what is innovation?"

His question drew some suppressed chuckles from the class. Both his question and the reaction of the class were honest responses. As students at our school, they hear this term innovation all the time, so he should know the definition (right??). Laughter. Yet...after turning the question to the class for others to chime in on, nobody else could quite put their finger on a definition for innovation. 

Silence. 

At the end of the day, Kevin, Todd and I circled up to compare notes. Each of us instructs two sections of the course, so we intend to be intentional about planning so that each section has a similar experience. I shared what had happened with the question and an insight was born. Should we shift gears and talk terminology? 

Our school invites visitors on campus frequently, whether teachers and administrators from other schools or families of prospective students. In many instances, The Hive, where we hold iDL, is the first stop on their visit to the middle school. We wondered, "If visitors arrived on campus and our student-designers could not describe the work at hand, were we doing a disservice to our students, our course, our school?"

We circled the wagons and "chopped it up."

...and invited input from external partners via Twitter.


We invited input from in-house thought leadership.



After much discussion and reflections, we settled on adapting IDEO's definition of innovation.

"Innovation is the ability to creatively generate and execute new ideas" (IDEO)

We also decided to examine the definitions of some design terms in an effort to equip our student-designers with a working vocabulary.  
What terms would you include??
  
Up next week...design challenge #1. We are jumping in to designing an artifact for a partner employing empathy interviews, crafting insights, creating a prototype, seeking feedback before finally iterating.

Let's do this!

Join us on Twitter 
@TheMVDesignLab 
#impactfromthemiddle

Kevin Day @knowKMD
Todd Wass @toddw42
Ryan Welch @welch79

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