Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Improvement beyond the mousetrap

If you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door.

Or so the saying (inaccurately) attributed to Emerson goes. It also reveals a bias when thinking about innovation: that innovation involves making a better product. But that's not always the case.

Apple revolutionized the music business. Some say they saved the music business when they were seeing declining CD sales and increasing (free) online music sharing. The music executives' main reaction was to start suing their customers for piracy for downloading copies of songs from their friends without paying for them. Suing your customers is rarely a good business strategy.

Apple's iTunes changed the music business. First, customers could buy music by the track rather than having to buy an entire album. Second, the tracks were inexpensive, about 99 cents. While that's not free, it's pretty cheap which made it competitive with with free (but pirated) music. Third, it was fully integrated with iPods.

iTunes was not a better mousetrap (although the iPod was). iTunes was a better means for merchandising and distribution of music. Merchandising and distribution don't have the sex appeal of product improvements, of better mousetraps. However, as the iTunes example demonstrates, it can be very important, it can save an industry.

Where will the most important innovations in education be? The primary goal is to improve student performance so we are naturally drawn to improving the "mousetrap" of education, teachers teaching in their classrooms. And there are many opportunities for such product innovations.

At the same time, just as innovation in music merchandising and distribution changed that business, changes other than classroom changes can improve education. Three foundational opportunities:

• Behavior management - while not the goal of the school, student performance will suffer without orderly classrooms and orderly school environments.
• Relationships - again, not a goal of the school, but supportive relationships between teachers and students and between staff and administration can make a big difference for student performance.
• Curriculum - although many aspects of curriculum are specified in state learning standards, it is still critically important that teaching conform to learning standards and align what is taught in first grade with what is taught in second grade and so on, to make the most efficient use of instruction time.

Improvements in these areas are the iTunes of education complementing the iPod of education, learning in classrooms.

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Keywords: continuous improvement