Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
The OTHER-SIDE of the Coin!
Kids need more time in the land of make-believe
BY DAVID CRARY • ASSOCIATED PRESS • November 23, 2008
In one classroom, preschool teachers squatted on the floor, pretending to be cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers. Next door, another group ended a musical game by placing their tambourines and drums atop their heads.
Silly business, to be sure, but part of an agenda of utmost seriousness: to spread the word that America's children need more time for freewheeling play at home and in their schools.
"We're all sad, and we're a little worried. ... We're sad about something missing in childhood," psychologist Michael Thompson recently told 900 early-childhood educators from 22 states.
"We have to fight back," he declared. "We're going to fight for play."
The teachers then dispersed into dozens of workshops, some lighthearted, some scholarly, but all supporting the case that creative, spontaneous play is vital and endangered.
It's not a brand-new cause -- two years ago it was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But social changes and new demands on kids' spare time confront free-play advocates with an ever-moving target.
Among the speakers at the New York conference was Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a Temple University psychologist who contends that lack of play in early childhood education "could be the next global warming."
Without ample opportunity for forms of play that foster innovation and creative thinking, she argues, America's children will be at a disadvantage in the global economy.
"Play equals learning," she said. "For too long we have divorced the two."
Some of the factors behind diminished time for play have been evolving for decades, others are more recent. Added together, they have resulted in eight to 12 fewer hours of free play time per week for the average American child since the 1980s, experts say.
Among the key factors, according to Thompson:
• Parents' reluctance to let their kids play outside on their own, for fear of abduction or injury, and the companion trend of scheduling lessons, supervised sports and other structured activities that consume a large chunk of a child's nonschool hours.
• More hours per week spent by kids watching TV, playing video games, using the Internet, communicating on cell phones.
• Shortening or eliminating recess at many schools -- a trend so pronounced that the National PTA has launched a "Rescuing Recess" campaign.
• More emphasis on formal learning in preschool, more homework for elementary school students and more pressure from parents on young children to quickly acquire academic skills.
"Parents are more self-conscious and competitive than in the past," Thompson said. "They're pushing their kids to excel. ... Free play loses out."
The consequences are potentially dire, according to Thompson. He contends that diminished time to play freely with other children is producing a generation of socially inept young people and is a factor behind high rates of youth obesity, anxiety, attention-deficit disorder and depression.
Many families turn to organized sports as a principal nonschool activity, but Thompson said this option doesn't necessarily breed creativity and can lead to burnout for good young athletes and frustration for the less skilled.
Vivian Paley, a former kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and now an author and consultant, argues that the most vital form of play for young children involves fantasy and role-playing with their peers.
"They're inventing abstract thinking before the world tells them what to think," Paley said in her speech to the conference. "It gets them thinking, 'I am intended to have my own ideas.' "
MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Report
Digital Media and Learning (Web-site)
http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2029199/
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
FI3T Project PI's Meeting AGENDA November 22, 2008
FI3T Project PIs Meeting
November 24, 2008
5:00 – 7:00 pm
SOE Conference Room 251
University of Michigan-Dearborn
AGENDA
1.0 Welcome
2.0 Seminar Meeting Dec. 13
2.1 Structure
2.2 Celebration
3.0 Food ideas for 12/3 and 12/13
4.0 Advisory Board Meeting
4.1 Schedule for early January
5.0 Workshops - Winter
5.1 Students
5.1.1 Schedule – want to distribute on 12/13
5.2 Parents
5.2.1 Schedule – want to distribute on 12/13
6.0 PI Meetings - Winter
6.1 Schedule
7.0 Meeting with School Principals
7.1 Schedule
8.0 Others
9.0 Adjourn
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
WINDSPIRE INSPIRES GOING GREEN! (GREAT LAKES IT REPORT PRESS RELEASE)
 |
| An example of a Windspire installation |
Posted: Monday, 17 November 2008 9:35PM
Warren Schools To Consider Renewable Energy Curriculum
A unique vertical-axis wind turbine would be installed at the Macomb Math, Science and Technology Center under an agreement to be considered Wednesday night by the board of the Warren Consolidated Schools.
The Windspire wind turbine would be installed by Southern Exposure Renewable Energy Co. of Ortonville. It's manufactured by Nevada-based Mariah Power.
The turbine is part of a larger proposal to create a "renewable energy institute" at the math and science magnet school, with the company and the school district working together to develop a new renewable energy curriculum.
More at www.mariahpower.com or www.seenergyco.com.
Recently Mariah Power partnered with Mastech of Sterling Heights to manufacture its Windspire product at Mastech's plant in Manistee. The first Michigan made wind turbines are scheduled to become available in February.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Framing for the Proposed Legislation (Previous Post)
Stephen Dill proposes a 21st Century system based on these objectives:
- Extend education throughout life. Make it a part of our daily lives and have it begin with birth and end soon after death.
- Take education out of centralized buildings (schools) and make it the responsibility of the family, community, nation, and the world.
- Leverage technology to enable everyone to have access to the same resources.
Scenario
Let’s look at this from the perspective of the individual and step it out to the world.
Individuals
- Youth education is seen as a family function, augmented by a volunteer force of seniors, retirees, and experts available in the immediate and adjacent communities performing the roles of teacher, coach and mentor.
- Youth education begins in the home using modules with lessons for parent, child and siblings.
- Individual education is an individual’s obligation to society, advocated by federal law, supported by employers, communities and families.
- Course topics cross all philosophies, languages, religions and beliefs for the old and the young they are teaching.
- Team teaching is carried out in playgroups in neighborhoods in homes, community centers, parks and businesses. Groups of adults of all ages with similar interests meet in public and corporate settings as well as virtually within collaborative Web environments. Parents and children gather in homes and community centers, sharing interests and research and reporting progress among peers.
- When the individual exhibits enough maturity, progress is self-determined, self-monitored and presented to the relevant communities for input and use by others.
- Learning happens in life: in the workplace, the libraries, on the farms, in the factories of the immediate and adjacent neighborhoods.
- Scheduling, networking and cross leveling of resources is supported online.
- Education is not seen as a formal stage of life, instead a life-long habit of reading, reflecting, exchanging and growing.
US education system
- Facilitates discussions about learning, living and life.
- Teaches self esteem, self-confidence and the value of improving one’s self, community, nation, world and legacy.
- Gradually returns school buildings to alternative uses.
US culture
- Gradually encourages lifelong learning
- Respect for generations, races and all differences is built into every person’s thinking as they learn to rely on more and more people in order to learn, to carry out their obligation.
World culture
- Understanding and respect for nationalities, beliefs, generations, races and all differences is built into every person’s thinking as they learn to rely on more and more people in order to learn, to carry out their obligation.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
WHAT a CONCEPT!
EDUCATION WEEK
Published Online: November 11, 2008
Published Online: November 11, 2008
Published in Print: November 12, 2008
Commentary
Universities and Public Schools: A Partnership Whose Time Has Come
Even after a presidential election that featured too little discussion of education, few Americans would not know that our public schools often fail the students who need them most, particularly those in the inner city. One promising strategy for lessening this systemwide deficiency involves enlisting new external partners to collaborate in school improvement, including for-profit companies, foundations, community-based organizations, and colleges and universities.
Each of these partners has much to offer, but the vote here is that colleges and universities—because of the resources they bring to bear, but also because of their stake in public schools’ success—are best equipped to do the job. As higher education leaders ourselves, we are admittedly biased, but we also speak from direct personal experience: our past involvement in creating Philadelphia’s Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School and the Penn Partnership Schools network, and our current efforts to create a range of partnerships between Teachers College, Columbia University, and public schools in the surrounding New York City neighborhood of Harlem.
These efforts have not only expanded educational options for children, but also completely sold us on the value of, and the imperative for, higher education’s being deeply involved in community development. Indeed, at Teachers College in late October, we convened a working conference of university and public school leaders from New York state who believe, as we do, that the moment is ripe for a new era of university-public school partnerships. The potential benefits for both sets of partners are huge, and the failure to realize them could in turn spell failure for the broader enterprise of American education.
Why universities? The answer lies in the problems that public schools face, and that underlie education’s achievement gaps in general.
More than a century ago, John Dewey argued that education is not merely knowledge received by students in sterile classrooms, but is instead an ongoing process of active engagement that occurs in churches, streets, communities, homes, and all the other theaters of life.
Of course, the corollary of this view is that the performance of a child in school is a reflection not only of the quality of her teachers, but also the supports and challenges in her home and community life, her economic and social well-being, and her mental and physical health.
We believe that universities, with faculty members working across a range of fields and disciplines, have the breadth of expertise to help public schools address all these issues. At the same time, universities have access to the highest-quality research and empirical knowledge to implement new models for schooling. And because they themselves are in the business of education, they understand firsthand the imperatives and challenges involved.
The last point underscores the stake that universities hold in public schools’ success. The students struggling in public school classrooms today are the students who—should they make it that far—will struggle in university classrooms tomorrow. If they arrive on the steps of higher education needing significant remediation, that becomes the universities’ problem to solve. Surely, for the most selfish of reasons, it is in the universities’ interest to fix the problem at the beginning of the pipeline rather than at the end.
Moreover, universities are also neighbors. Often they operate—and their students and many of their faculty and staff members live—in or next to poor communities. Beyond a moral obligation to be of service, universities can apply resources so that everyone prospers from strong and safe environments, accessible institutions, and a broad array of economic and educational opportunities.
The case for universities as the partner of choice for public schools is evident. But the path universities must follow to make such partnerships work is less so. Here, from our own experience and that of others, are some of the factors we believe are essential for success.
Mutual respect. Too often, the divide between theoreticians at universities and practitioners in public schools is never bridged. Each camp believes that it knows best and that the other is incapable of “getting it.” In fact, whether the players acknowledge it or not, education at any level is a continuous loop between theory and practice. Academicians, for their part, base their ideas, results, and curricula on what occurs in the field. The goal should be to acknowledge and maximize this exchange and constantly harvest its fruits.
Sustained commitment. Successful, sustained partnerships are built on honest relationships and equal levels of commitment to agreed-upon goals. Making partnerships of any kind succeed takes time. The partners must learn one another’s strengths and weaknesses, adapt to one another’s cultures, and simply observe, over time, the programs they have implemented together to see what works and what needs improvement. Similarly, it takes time for fears, mistrust, and resistance to be overcome. At a minimum, a single cohort of students should have moved through a school before a partnership can be declared a success.
Quid pro quos. There must be genuine, agreed-upon benefits for both partners. The university that sends its researchers into a public school merely to obtain data will generate little more than resentment. Instead, universities must approach partnerships with the stated aim of improving student outcomes—and then take accountability for the results. They must also be willing to provide tangible benefits, such as professional-development opportunities for teachers, the assignment of on-site specialists and interns to decrease students-to-teacher ratios, and access to campus resources.
At the same time, the public school that looks merely for a handout will soon alienate its academic partner. Instead, the school must commit to a climate conducive to both research and change, with buy-in starting at the top and emanating across staff members, parents, and other stakeholders. All of this must result from careful assessment—both beforehand and ongoing—of where common ground lies and where the impact will be greatest. Technology? The arts? Mathematics? The answers depend on a painstaking effort to address the range of supports needed to ensure that all students reap the desired academic and social benefits of the partnership.
Engagement of all stakeholders. If, as Dewey maintained, education is a product of all societal institutions, university partners must work to engage other institutions to make a university-public school partnership work. These other forces include community leaders and parents; city, school board, medical, and mental-health leaders; and teachers’ union officials.
All of this takes not only time, but also hard work, the commitment of financial resources and people power, and, above all, the mobilization of political will. Obviously, there are risks for the higher education partner. If public school students perform poorly, it will reflect negatively on the university. If the university withdraws, the public school loses resources and the university loses credibility.
But the alternatives are far riskier. Schools and students will continue to fail. Universities will continue to be castigated for their indifference, generating ill will in their surrounding communities—and they will continue to be flooded with students who are unprepared to succeed in higher education and who require expensive and difficult remediation.
On the other side of the coin, the rewards of success are surely what we all hope for: a productive education pipeline; improved knowledge and practice of what works in schools; the closing of achievement gaps; the restoration of the U.S. education system as the world’s finest; and the revitalization of American competitiveness in the global economy.
Plus partners on the ground gain something more on the personal level. Three years ago, our university-assisted school partner, the Penn Alexander School, graduated its first class of 8th graders. Judith Rodin, then the president of the University of Pennsylvania, spoke at the ceremony, which the whole community attended. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
As educators, we had never been prouder.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
MICHIGAN STEM SUMMIT?
A STEM Stimulus Package
Some states look to jump-start STEM opportunities
By Isa Zimmerman and Massachusetts STEM stakeholders and volunteers
Converge Summer 2008
Along with the first American telegraph, the first basketball game and the first e-mail, Massachusetts was the first state in the union to hold a statewide STEM summit. It was 2004, following the U.S. Department of Education's National Summits on Mathematics and Science, when Massachusetts launched the nation's first summit on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The focus was to bring stakeholders together to define and discuss STEM issues in the Commonwealth and to pursue solutions.
The problems were clear: not enough students graduating with STEM backgrounds to fill the open positions in the marketplace; graduates choosing business rather than teaching; and fewer students indicating an interest in STEM careers.
At about the same time, the Massachusetts Legislature began investing in STEM workforce development through the Economic Stimulus Bill. This legislation was intended to improve education and preparation of students for the STEM pipeline and has provided over $10 million in funding for STEM programs.
While the programs have produced many ideas and engaged students, several people -- especially those in the private sector -- were frustrated with having to reiterate their needs and interests. Additionally, there was some repetition of initiatives, which meant that scarce resources were not being used to their best advantage. Slowly the notion emerged for a well-constructed, strategic plan. The plan would lay out an inventory and a comparison of actual resources versus needs, which would help focus the efforts of all the stakeholders in the Commonwealth.
In 2006, Jack Wilson, the president of the University of Massachusetts, himself a physicist, created a position to oversee STEM activities and a call went out at the fourth summit for volunteers interested in creating a state plan. Several networks were targeted to secure broad representation of the institutions and groups working on STEM.
Several face-to-face meetings, many e-mails and at least eight drafts, resulted in an outline. This volunteer group identified all the elements needed in a state STEM plan.
However, a volunteer group with no affiliation does not have the authority to promulgate the development of a plan. So the next step was to go to the Department of Higher Education, where the Pipeline Fund resides, and which oversees the functioning of the Robert H. Goddard Council, an oversight group mandated by the Economic Stimulus Bill. The council includes pre-kindergarten through higher education stakeholders, legislators and business representatives. The group proposed the development of a plan for Massachusetts, based on the outline created by the volunteers.
The council agreed and approved a contract to hire an overseer for the process.
On Nov. 7, 2007, the Goddard Council approved the development of a state STEM plan with the nonprofit organization Education Development Center, Inc., overseeing the planning process. An advisory committee was convened and a process determined.
In May 2008, the Massachusetts Legislature re-established its STEM Caucus to contribute to the plan. This is an informal group led by a state representative and a senator, which brings together other legislators, educators and the business sector to "resolve" policy and financial supports for STEM in Massachusetts.
Straight from the Plan
The following is excerpted from the Massachusetts STEM plan:
Massachusetts STEM Education Goal and Objectives
The goal of an integrated STEM strategy for Massachusetts is to increase, by 35 percent, the number of high school students preparing for and entering STEM careers by 2012, as measured by SAT indication of STEM career choices and college applications in STEM disciplines.
To achieve this goal, the following objectives should be met:
- Increase significantly the number of students, including females and culturally and linguistically diverse and underserved students, who are aware of, interested in, and motivated to study STEM from elementary school through higher education graduation.
- Raise the level of STEM achievement of all Massachusetts students, from elementary school through completion of higher education, by 10 percent a year increase in performance as measured by a variety of methodologies and indicators of achievement, including MCAS, NAEP, TIMSS, and college course completion rates within the next five years.
- Increase, by 10 percent a year, the number of qualified teachers of STEM (pre-k - 16) who can provide solid STEM education for all students, through both teacher preparation and professional development, as measured by number of teachers licensed in STEM and hired to teach STEM subjects within the next five years.
- Increase, by 10 percent a year, the number of students entering as STEM college majors who then graduate in these fields.
- Improve and provide equitable STEM instruction, curriculum and programs from elementary school through higher education as indicated from an inventory to be prepared as part of the state plan.
Massachusetts looked to the following state plans while developing its own:
- Alabama:http://www.amsti.org
- Connecticut:http://www.ctacad.org/files/2007KeepingCTCompetitive.pdf
- Georgia:http://www.gaprism.org
- Hawaii:http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/innovation
- Kentucky:One of the recommendations of Kentucky's STEM task force is to engage business, industry and civic leaders to improve STEM education and skills in the Commonwealth and create incentives for Kentucky businesses that employ and invest in STEM-educated students.
http://cpe.ky.gov/news/reports/cpe_reports/stem.htm - Minnesota's STEM Web site lets readers know that STEM is more than just math equations, lab reports and spreadsheets. It's about getting into subjects that can lead to exciting careers.
http://www.mn-stem.com - Ohio:http://stem.ohio.gov
- Rhode Island:Accountability for results in math and science has been assigned to the governor's new Statewide PK-16 Council. Through this structure, responsibility for and commitment to action will be shared among Rhode Island's educational and business leaders to ensure system improvement on each of the recommended strategies.
http://www.governor.ri.gov/documents/TEC_M&S_FA_LR.pdf - Texas:http://www.tea.state.tx.us/ed_init/sec/thsp/tstem.html
STEM / ITEST Update
National Science Foundation Awards Institutions Promoting STEM in K-12 Schools
By News Report
November 04, 2008
Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries and Clarkson University announced they have been jointly awarded $1.4 million through the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) grant program, a national award that recognizes innovative teaching approaches that foster science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills among high school students.
Beacon Institute and Clarkson received the award to expand their Student Enabled Network of Sensors for the Environment using Innovative Technology (SENSE IT) curriculum, a program that will teach 9,000 New York high school students to design, build, test, deploy and interpret environmental sensors used to monitor water quality in the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers.
The program also includes intensive teacher training sessions on cutting-edge technological and education skills and requires long-term commitments by schools to utilize these methods. Students and teachers will work directly with the River and Estuary Observatory Network that is being implemented by Beacon Institute, IBM and Clarkson.
"For New York State and the nation to remain competitive in the global economy it is essential we develop math, science and engineering skills in young students," said John Cronin, director and CEO of Beacon Institute. "By combining an environmentally-driven purpose -- the monitoring and protection of critical waterways -- with advanced technological skills, we are preparing a new generation of innovators and leaders who can address one of our most pressing regional, national and global environmental challenges -- threatened water resources."
The SENSE IT program provides hands-on teacher and student training to construct sensors for the waters of the Hudson and St. Lawrence rivers with the goal of interesting students in STEM-based careers.
Disruption Seeks/Creates Cracks in the SILO!
Published Online: October 28, 2008
Published in Print: November 5, 2008
Scholars Discuss 'Disruptive Innovation' in K-12 Education
A latecomer to a panel discussion this week on “disruptive innovation” in K-12 education and health care may have suspected that he or she had entered the wrong room.
The main speaker, Clayton M. Christensen, was talking about the steel industry, not education or health. Then he discussed the automobile, radio, microchip, and software industries.
To Mr. Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School, those industries offer profound lessons for K-12 schooling. In every case, the introduction of a new technology led to the upending of the established leaders by upstart entrants, he explained at an Oct. 27 panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute.
See Also
What technological innovations have changed the way you teach and the way your students learn? Share your experiences in our forum.
Mr. Christensen, the lead author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, said similar changes will soon happen to public school districts, as providers of virtual schooling gradually claim more and more students, starting with those who are poorly served by their current schools.
'No Stupidity'
The book, published last spring and co-authored by Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, predicts that those changes will accelerate until, by 2019, roughly half of all high school courses will be taken online. ("Online Education Cast as 'Disruptive Innovation'," May 7, 2008.)
To the roomful of policy experts and educators at the think tank’s luncheon meeting, Mr. Christensen explained that the leading companies did not lose their primacy through their managers’ incompetence. Instead, it was because they obeyed two hallowed principles of business: First, listen to your best customers and give them what they want; and second, invest where the profit margin is most attractive.
Rather, businesses need to be willing to act in ways that may be opposed to their short-term interests, and that lower their costs and simplify their products or services, making them more attractive to a larger pool of potential customers.
“It’s a story with no villains and no stupidity,” noted Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the AEI and the moderator of the discussion.
Mr. Horn, who runs Innosight Institute, a think tank in Watertown, Mass., devoted to Mr. Christensen’s theories, was on a panel at the event. Outlining the application to education, he cited Harvard education professor Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and said “children’s need for customization collides with schools’ imperative for standardization.”
The billions of dollars that have been invested to put computers into schools have failed to make a difference because “we have crammed them into conventional classrooms,” said Mr. Horn.
Schools and students have not been able to reap the benefits of technology, he said, because of the web of constraints—called “interdependencies”—that schools have not been able to escape, including the organization of the school day, the division of learning in academic disciplines, the architecture of school buildings, and the federal, state, and local mandates that educators must obey.
'Customization'
On hand at the Oct. 27 event as the official “responder and raconteur” was education expert Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington.
Perhaps to the surprise of some in the audience, Mr. Finn generally agreed with Mr. Christensen’s and Mr. Horn’s arguments.
Mr. Finn, who served in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, had two main points of contention. First, he disliked the authors’ reliance on Mr. Gardner’s theories, which, he asserted, are dismissed by “respectable cognitive psychologists.”
On that point, the authors are “wrong, but it doesn’t matter,” he concluded. “Gardner or no, I’m still in favor of greater individualization and customization of education.”
Second, Mr. Finn said, he thinks the authors have underestimated the power of politics to stymie the change in education, because in most cases it is the schools, not the students, that are the purchasers of the new technology-driven forms of education.
That means virtual schools will face “resistance and pushback and hubris, and a sort of smugness” from public education, Mr. Finn said.
As a result, he said, he did not expect regular public schools to become the “main route” for new technologies to be applied to K-12 education.
Mr. Finn added that a more likely route was for charter schools and families to purchase the technology directly, possibly in the form of supplemental private education, perhaps subsidized by philanthropies.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
INNOVATION CONSTANT: IRRESPECTIVE of Space and Time!
It’s No Time to Forget About Innovation
James Yang
BY its very nature, innovation is inefficient. While blockbusters do emerge, few of the new products or processes that evolve from innovative thinking ultimately survive the test of time. During periods of economic growth, such inefficiencies are chalked up as part of the price of forging into the future.
But these aren’t such times. Wild market gyrations, frozen credit markets and an overall sour economy herald a new round of corporate belt-tightening. Foremost on the target list is anything inefficient. That’s bad news for corporate innovation, and it could spell trouble for years to come, even after the economy turns around.
“To be honest, we had a problem with innovation even before the economic crisis. That’s the reason I wrote my book,” says Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap.” “We’re focusing on the short term and we’re not planting the seeds for the future.”
In tough times, of course, many companies have to scale back. But, she says: “To quote Obama, you don’t use a hatchet. You use a scalpel. Leaders need to pick and choose with great care.”
There are important things managers can do to ensure that creative forward-thinking doesn’t go out the door with each round of layoffs. Fostering a companywide atmosphere of innovation — encouraging everyone to take risks and to think about novel solutions, from receptionists to corner-suite executives — helps ensure that the loss of any particular set of minds needn’t spell trouble for the entire company.
She suggests instilling five core values to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set: questioning, risk-taking, openness, patience and trust. All five must be used together — risk-taking without questioning leads to recklessness, she says, while patience without trust sets up an every-man-for-himself mentality.
In an era of Six Sigma black belts and brown belts, Ms. Estrin urges setting aside certain efficiency measures in favor of what she calls “green-thumb leadership” — a future-oriented management style that understands, and even encourages, taking risks. Let efficiency measures govern the existing “factory farm,” she says, but create greenhouses and experimental gardens along the sides of the farm to nurture the risky investments that likely will take a number of years to bear fruit.
“I’m not suggesting you only cut from today’s stuff and keep the future part untouched,” she says. “You have to balance it.”
Yet even that approach has its drawbacks. Companies that create silos of innovation by designating one group as the “big thinkers” while making others handle day-to-day concerns risk losing their innovative edge if any of the big thinkers leave the company or ultimately must be laid off.
“Innovation has to be embedded in the daily operation, in the entire work force,” says Jon Fisher, a business professor, serial entrepreneur, and author of “Strategic Entrepreneurism,” which advocates building a start-up’s business from the beginning with an eye toward selling the company. “A large acquirer’s interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don’t, based on the innovation you have to offer. The best way to foster innovation is to create something, put it to the test, build a good company and then get it under the umbrella of a world-renowned company to move it forward.”
David Thompson, chief executive and co-founder of Genius.com Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif., says that innovation “has a bad name in down times” but that “bad times focus the mind and the best-focused minds in the down times are looking for the opportunities.”
“You do have to batten down the hatches and reduce expenses, but you can’t do it at the expense of the big picture,” Mr. Thompson adds. “You always have to keep in mind the bigger picture that’s coming down the road in two or three years.
“The last thing you want to do with innovation is just throw money at it. It’s a very tricky balance.”
In fact, hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration, says Chris Shipley, a technology analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences, where new ideas make their debuts. “Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times,” she says. In the early 1990s, tens of millions of dollars had gone down the drain in a futile effort to develop “pen computing” — an early phase of mobile computing — and a recession was shriveling the economic outlook.
Yet the tiny Palm Computing managed to revitalize the entire industry in a matter of months by transforming itself overnight from a software maker into a hardware company.
“Our biggest challenge right now is fear,” she says. “The worst thing that a company can do right now is go into hibernation, into duck-and-cover. If you just sit on your backside and wait for things to get better, they’re not going to. They’re going to get better for somebody, but not necessarily for you.”
HOWARD LIEBERMAN, also a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute, says innovation breeds effectiveness. It’s not about efficiency, he argues. “Efficiency is for bean counters,” he says. “It’s not for C.E.O.’s or inventors or founders.”
The current economic downturn comes as no surprise to him, he says, because it mirrors the downturn at the time of the dot-com bust. Then and now, the companies that survive are those that keep creativity and innovation foremost.
“Creativity doesn’t care about economic downturns,” Mr. Lieberman says. “In the middle of the 1970s, when we were having a big economic downturn, both Apple and Microsoft were founded. Creative people don’t care about the time or the season or the state of the economy; they just go out and do their thing.”
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