Managing for Innovation (review)

Innovation is a continuous pursuit in higher education. Although colleges and universities are generally conservative enterprises, they must adapt to the changing needs of the dynamic society they exist to serve. Nevertheless, innovation is often an elusive goal. Grant and Riesman's classic The Perpetual Dream: Reform and Experiment in American Higher Education (1978) is a veritable archive of well conceived but ultimately disappointing educational innovations. Nearly three decades ago, Arthur Levine (1980) analyzed reasons why innovation often fails. His account could probably be reissued today with little change and still provide valuable insight on the challenges posed by the process of innovation in higher education.

Fortunately, the recent New Directions for Higher Education book, Managing for Innovation, takes a distinctive approach to this important topic. Its focus is not on specific innovations or on why they succeed or fall short of their original promise. Instead, it is concerned with how conditions can be created (i.e., managed) to promote innovation. This monograph provides a variety of useful models and practices academic leaders and administrators can employ to support innovation. It also presents instructive case examples of recent reform efforts in higher education. In a sense, Managing for Innovation takes a nuts-and-bolts approach to innovation.

While many books on innovation are idealistic and emphasize goals more than process, this one presents tools that would-be innovators can employ to initiate and, more importantly, sustain innovation. Two chapters on the Malcolm Baldridge Model for Innovation introduce a detailed and tested process to support change and enhance organizational effectiveness. These chapters detail the key elements of the Baldridge model (e.g., leadership, strategic planning, market and stakeholder focus, process, and performance analysis) and explain how this model, developed for the for-profit sector, can be adapted to higher education settings.

A chapter on universal design also provides a distinctive lens for thinking innovatively about higher education policies and practices. Initially, universal design focused on how the physical environment could be made accessible to everyone, regardless of their physical limitations. Applied more broadly, the universal design concept provides a platform for considering how all dimensions of higher education can be revised to accommodate more diverse clients and to make advanced education accessible to everyone who can benefit from attending college.

Developing leaders capable of promoting innovation is a key element of the managing for innovation equation. A chapter on the United Kingdom's Leadership Foundation for Higher Education illustrates that country's systematic effort to prepare leaders who will be well equipped to manage the difficult task of promoting innovation. Readers can use the model presented in this chapter to consider how best to develop leaders to advance innovation in the United States or other countries.

The key processes of supporting and developing individuals as leaders, building institutional leadership capacity, and creating learning networks (to promote leadership) are each relevant to the needs of U.S. higher education (and probably elsewhere) and provide a basis for thinking systematically about how to tie together the two essential and interrelated concepts of innovation and leadership.

Today, innovation cannot be considered without also thinking about technology. A chapter addressing the role of technology in innovation is informative but spends more time discussing information technology itself than how technology can be used to promote innovation. The chapter does emphasize how technology can foster collaboration, often an important prerequisite of innovation. However, the chapter gets quite technical for the general reader, running the risk of losing key points by focusing on details important to technology specialists but not necessarily to leaders and managers. Still, this chapter leaves no doubt that technology is an essential tool today when managing for innovation.

The logistical, "how to" aspect of this monograph is supplemented nicely by case study material that helps to ground the book's conceptual contents in the reality of practice. In particular, the Western Governors University case shows that innovation is...