Educational Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Social Activism

We live at extraordinary times to advance educational opportunity. Skills and knowledge are recognized as important by most people, and there is support for the idea that all persons deserve the opportunity to develop their talent. We also have an infrastructure, based on the efforts of the last decades, that provides all children and youth the opportunity to be schooled. We also face challenges, the challenge of translating such access into meaningful learning. What role can entrepreneurs play in helping to accelerate the pace of innovation in addressing this challenge? Should the ability to produce changes at scale in the 'education space' be a requirement to consider someone an entrepeneur? What is the distinction between an entrepeneurial individual in education and a social activist? These are the topics of discussion in this class

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k101911&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup179084

What are your thoughts about these topics?

Educational Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Role of Universities.

 There is an excellent article in the Boston Globe Today on the efforts MIT is advancing to foster innovation. Well done President Reif!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/01/26/mit-reboots-approach-innovation/TExxXWxI02WOR4NZKIHAFP/story.html

Why are these efforts exceptional? Why isn't it the norm for Universities to lead in creating an ecosystem that translates research based knowledge into innovative designs to address important problems? What do you think are the barriers that need to be overcome? Should universities more intentionally play this role?

Here are a couple of short articles on the role of universities in promoting innovation

http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/03/educational-innovation-technol/

http://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline/fall-2012/innovating-universities