Philadelphia has always been a community filled with partnership and innovation, and in the last few years the city has built a burgeoning tech hub and an entrepreneurial-minded district that has enhanced innovative partnerships in scope and scale. But what does social innovation mean for the operation and management of schools?  In order to ensure that social innovations are being optimized, it is critical for the school to foster an environment that is amicable to change and open to new ways of operating. Innovative thinking first happens internally at the school level, which in turn leads to opportunities to partner with groups that are socially entrepreneurial.  If the school is the innovation hub then it must take on a leadership role when engaging with partners. For this to be true, I believe 3 things are necessary for innovation and social entrepreneurship to truly thrive within schools. 

1. A skilled principal with a long-term vision for the school:

a. It is critical that the principal has a long-term view of what school success looks like. Without this central component, principals may seem to engage in activities that may be new, exciting, morale boosting or even innovative, but these activities do not translate into long-lasting school and community gains.  A long-term vision includes an understanding about what is needed at the classroom and administrative levels to create a healthy school culture and efficiently operating administrative team.  With a strong school vision, a principal is able to clearly assess where true innovation is most needed to make long-lasting, positive change.

2. A school “story of self”

a. Once a principal has a long-term vision, it is easy to provide the school staff and students with a “story of self”. This is what I consider to be the “school identity.”  It is a message that resonates with students and staff and provides an identity they can rally around to express their past, present and future. When the school community is invested in their “story of self,” they are more apt to take risks, support each other and empower their students.  The “story of self” allows schools to begin to welcome innovation within the school community. The school can create organizational change and shift metal frameworks of their staff and students with increased ease vs. the usual jarring impacts and negative responses that change can often bring.

3. A belief in data

a. It is really important that the school believes in data and its uses. The principal and school leadership must have strong analytical skills so that they are able to deeply understand what data is telling them and are able to use this data to express their needs so that they can invest parents and community partners.  Emotional investment from the community is vital to ensuring innovative changes take hold, but data is necessary to ensure that it is working.  Without data, schools can launch innovate ideas and programs, spend tight budget funds and never see the return on their investment.  It is critical that not only do they require social entrepreneurial groups to provide data but that the school has its own independent way of tracking results to ensure that they are truly making gains in the areas that are most important to them.

There are many components to successfully integrating innovation into the school culture and surrounding community.  The prior 3 items state the most basic assumptions that must be true before we can start to test which innovations work best. If we truly believe that social innovation is the next frontier of education reform we must first spend time fostering the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit within our principals, teachers and students.