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1.3.6.1. Innovation at Universities
Education has long been acknowledged as one of the key sectors for the application of new innovations, especially ICT based innovations. However the visions and expectation of the observers have seldom been realized or at least not been realized to the degree and within the timeframe specified. radical optimist the eminent scientist, entrepreneur, and futurologist Ray Kurzweil has envisioned the future of education as follows: "Because of current bandwidth limitations and the lack of effective three-dimensional displays, the virtual environment provided today through routine Web access does not yet fully compete with 'being there', but that will change. In the early part of the second decade of this century visual-auditory virtual-reality environments will be full immersion, very high resolution, and very convincing. Most colleges will follow MIT's lead, and students will increasingly attend classes virtually. Virtual environments will provide high-quality virtual laboratories where experiments can be conducted in chemistry, nuclear physics, or any other scientific field. Students will be able to interact with a virtual Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison, or even to become a virtual Thomas Jefferson. Classes will be available for all grade levels in many languages. The devises needed to enter these high-quality, high-resolution virtual classrooms will be ubiquitous and affordable even in third world countries. Students at any age, from toddlers to adults, will be able to access the best education in the world at any time and from any place" (Kurzweil, 2005, p. 337). As stated, this radial position has to seen with skepticism as most of these kinds of visions turn out wrong. For example the very Thomas Edison mentioned in the above quote proclaimed in 1913: "Books will soon be obsolete in schools ... It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years" (as cited by Reiser, 2001). Traditional media and practices have enormous advantages when it comes to usability and the possibility of inter-generational understanding of the practices.
Probably one of the first researchers to tackle the precise question how universities innovate was Arthur Levine (1980). He has written a book entitled ‘Why innovation fails’, which despite its pessimistic title, is investigating how universities and colleges can successfully change. His findings are explained as example of a whole group of scholars, who, over the following years have done considerable amount of investigation into barriers of change and especially technology adaptation. Levine developed and tested a model to describe the success or failure, the institutionalization or termination of an innovation in an organization. His theory builds upon the concept of boundary expansion. Each organization has a unique set of norms, values and goals which constitute its boundaries. He quotes Kai Erikson who described these boundaries as a “symbolic set of parentheses” controlling the organizations social space in order to retain “a limited range of activities and a given pattern of constancy and stability within the larger environment” (Erikson, 1966, p. 10). Thus these boundaries circumscribe the personality or culture appropriate to the organization. These boundaries are – similar to human development – relatively flexible in the early stage and become more and more rigid and eager to maintain the status quo the older the organization gets.
He describes the process of how the ‘personality traits’ of the innovation penetrates the host organization if it is received positively as boundary expansion. Two processes make up boundary expansion, on the one hand is the innovation diffusing into the organization and thereby changing its routines (he calls this process enclaving), on the other hand are the users changing and appropriating their uses and utilities to the innovation (a process which has been described as ‘user driven innovation’ (Hippel & Sloan School of Management., 1999)). When the innovation is perceived negatively boundary contraction happens. Boundary contraction is characterized by activities of the users to construct organizational boundaries which are meant to exclude the innovation. Thereby the innovation is labeled “deviant” and viewed as illegitimate. Two sanctions are applied to innovations that are perceived as deviant: either they are re-socialized – a process by which the innovative aspects that were in conflict with the traditional boundaries are changed making the innovation practically inexistent; or the innovation is terminated all together, meaning that it is eliminated from the organization.
Profitability and compatibility (congruence) are then proposed (in accordance with the results of many earlier studies) as the main determines for the rejection of incorporation of an innovation (i). Compatibility (ii) is the degree to which the norms, values and goals of an innovation are congruent with those of the host. Profitability is more difficult, because it is rather subjective (this is true especially in knowledge work). Rogers and Havens (1961) have therefore opted to define profitability as the adopter’s perceived profitability and not an objective measure. Maintenance is of great importance when it comes to compatibility. Levine distinguishes between two types of profitability – self-interest profitability and general profitability. Self-interest profitability is what motivates the sub-units and the individuals to adopt an innovation. General profitability is what makes the organization as a whole to go after an innovation. These two might be in conflict with each other. An organization might decide that an enterprise resource planning system is what is needed to get the processes and administration more efficient, thus profitable, while the sub-units are un-pleased with the idea of central control and an innovative but rigid system. On the other-hand the www can be seen as a good example which makes many jobs more diverse and is as such highly appreciated by the individual but deemed controversial for it is used for private goals as well as organizational goals. Two measurements are suggested for profitability – whether it satisfies the specific need for which it was created, and whether it positively or negatively affect the rest of the organization. Obviously the two indicators are highly interwoven (iii). When an innovation becomes incompatible it also becomes unprofitable. Therefore un-profitability is the ultimate indicator for innovation failure.
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(i) Other factors as reported from a literature review of Rogers and Shoemaker (E M Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971) include – relative advantage (“the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better than the idea it supersedes”); compatibility (“the degree to which an innovation is perceived as consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of the receiver”); complexity (“the degree to which an innovation is perceived as relatively difficult to understand and use”),; trialability, elsewhere called tryability or divisibility (“the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis”) and observability also called communicability (“the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others”)
(ii) Compatibility and profitability also include a strategic fit with externally demanded qualities – such as state or market demands (ministry policies and assessments, external ratings etc.)
(iii) Interestingly he states that scientists of culture (anthropologists and sociologists) are prone to highlight compatibility, while scientists of the individual (economists and psychologists) tend to stress profitability. Also the setting of the research is diagnosed to have an influence on the outcomes: Studies of researching innovation adoption in western industrialized countries stressed the profitability while studies looking at the conditions in developing countries found compatibility to be more important. Thirdly the research method had an influence on the outcomes: in-depth long term, participant observation case studies have more often stated compatibility as the main cause of boundary expansion or contraction, while studies using survey research methods reported profitability to be more important. Levine reasons that this might be so because compatibility is a more flexible variable (innovations can be adopted easier to the predominant routine) but profitability is a rather stiff measurement which either produces better results or not.
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