Innovation Box Options
Do you want to unlock your students' and educators' innovation potential? Here are some ways we can help.
Option #1: Launch a Supported Innovation Incubator in Your School
An innovation incubator program is an investment in empowering teachers, accelerating new solutions to educational problems and bringing about change in the lives of students then your school or district over an extended period of at least one year. The innovation incubator uses Innovation Box as the process to engage and ignite ideas that educators have and turn them into results-oriented solutions that have been tested at a small scale and are ready to scale-up.
An innovation incubator program is not a quick and easy fix, but is an investment in a process for supporting educators solve problems in their own contexts. Innovation incubator is designed to move the culture of an organization from looking outside for silver-bullets to solve their problems to asking "how might we solve...?"
An innovation incubator encourages from-the-ground-up solutions from people who are closest to the problems -- the teachers and administrators. It seems like teachers never have the time or space to be autonomous or creative in their response to persistent problems. The innovation incubator is an approach that encourages and supports teachers and principals to be creative and self-directed in designing solutions.
An innovation incubator would operate by inviting any educator in your system to participate in the Innovation Box process. Educators, or teams of educators, would proceed through the process over four to six months focused on solving a problem, testing solutions, and preparing the solution to scale.
Each participant or participating team would receive the Silver Innovation Box at the kickoff and members would participate in:
Two day kickoff workshop
Online meetings throughout the process
Minimum of four in-person follow-up meetings, including a pitch session
Coaching throughout the process
**We are currently working with a university for participants in an Innovation Box incubator or cohort to qualify for graduate credit in their education department.
“ ...it's not an innovation until it delivers value or helps someone solve a problem in the real world. It's important to differentiate invention from innovation. Too many conflate the two. .”
— Saul Kaplan (Business Innovation Factory)
Option #2: Use Incubator in a Box to Lead Your Own Incubator
Incubator in a Box provides all the processes and tools you eed to launch your own local incubator. The set of field-tested methods inspired by design thinking , Lean Startup, Google Sprint, and improvement science are designed to be used with teachers working on their own innovation projects. School and district leaders will find the step by step instructions in the Launch manual a great jumping off point for a local incubator, Schools that purchase Incubator in a Box receive two hours of planning support provided by phone to ensure a smooth launch.
Option #3: Choose a Problem and Sart a Cohort of Teachers Working to Solve it
A cohort of educators from one or more schools are organized as a network to pursue solutions to problems that they propose.
A teacher cohort is specifically designed to lead passionate teachers (or principals) through a problem solving process. Bringing together a cohort of teachers creates an opportunity for teachers to work together and provide feedback along the way.
An cohort of teachers operates a little different from the incubator program. First, rather focused on a single site, the cohort of teachers can come from across multiple schools or districts. Schools and districts could band together to offer this option if there wasn't enough momentum locally. Second, the amount of support from the external coach can vary. Innovation Box is designed to provide a road map for educators, so fewer in-person meetings are allowed. However, the process would still be designed to take four to six months and focus on solving a problem, testing solutions, and preparing the solution to scale.
Each participant would receive the Silver Innovation Box at the kickoff and members would participate in:
Two day kickoff workshop
Online meetings throughout the process
In-person meetings
Coaching throughout the process
**We are currently working with a university for participants in an Innovation Box incubator or cohort to qualify for graduate credit in their education department.
Option #4: Host a Workshop
Host a hands-on workshop to accelerate innovation and problem solving capacity in your educators. Rather than commit to an incubator or send teachers to participate in a cohort, you can identify the problem that needs to be solved and we will facilitate workshops where teachers will design solutions, test ideas, and prepare to scale.
For schools or districts that want to build capacity for innovation one step at a time there is an option to hold day long workshops. The workshops focus on innovation tactics that teachers at different stages of knowledge and experience can put to use immediately.
Workshops can be one-off or designed as a series.
Innovation workshops can be designed using Innovation Box as the base (in this case each participant or team would receive a box) or customized to meet the needs of the local district.
