League for Innovation in the Community College Spring 2020 | Page 16

Accelerate Innovation at
Your Community College
BY DOUG HALL
N
EED: The need for innovation at community colleges is clear.
Innovation ensures the long-term success of our institutions. It
enables more effective courses, greater community impact, and
more sustainable economics.
PROBLEM: The challenge is how to get started with creating a culture
of innovation at your community college. There is no one-size-fits-all
method for igniting innovation.
SOLUTIONS: Here are some methods that have been found to help
leaders ignite a culture of innovation at their community college.
1
Data-Driven Change. Gathering high-quality data on the state
of innovation across your institution can be a powerful starting
point for igniting an innovation culture. It begins with facilitating a
validated assessment of the perceptions, attitudes, habits, and innovation
practices of faculty, staff, and leadership across the college. Results
are then compared with world-class innovation cultures to identify
strengths that can be built on and weaknesses that offer opportunities for
improvement.
2
Ignite Your Early Adopters. All community colleges have faculty
and staff who innovate. A successful method for accelerating an
innovation culture is to amplify the impact of early adopters of
innovation by providing them with training and tools that feed their love
of innovation. The goal is to activate fresh ideas and accelerate their
implementation. With increased success, the new mindset, training, and
tools diffuse across the organization as others are inspired and educated
by early adopters.
3
Win Big. For some college cultures, the best way to accelerate
adoption is to achieve a big innovation win. Big success with
innovation ignites momentum. The win can be on a new or
existing challenge your community college faces. It can be ideas for
improving a bureaucratic work system or creating a new education
offering or revenue-generating program. With success, the culture often
moves from “we can’t” to “we can.” Key to success with this approach
is to concentrate energy—creating a big WOW—very fast and making it
happen even faster.
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