Preparing Future Innovators

The National Science Board is asking how we can prepare students to become future innovators in advance of policy recommendations it will deliver to the National Science Foundation next year. How can we actually teach innovation? Our technical and economic leadership depends on our ability to innovate. Traditional lecture-based instruction may flounder in this endeavor. Generation of new ideas requires us to think outside well-structured problem definitions and solutions; we need to make creative connections between existing ideas and look at problems in new ways.

Perhaps learning centered around open-ended projects would help. Project-based learning is becoming more prevalent at the college level (have a look at Olin College’s project-based curriculum, for example), but what about teaching innovation earlier in life? Ideally students would already have a foundation of curiosity and creativity by the time they get to college.

I urge that over-scheduled childhoods impede development of creative talents. In an earlier article, I suggested that children need plenty of opportunities for independent hands-on exploration. It takes lot of (unstructured) time to experiment and learn for yourself how things work, whether natural or built, and engaging in this process can amplify both curiosity and the flow of ideas.

We need folks who are not only creative and passionate about innovation, but also have the knowledge and tools to develop their ideas into actionable solutions. Innovation may be one of the hardest skills to teach, but we shouldn’t stop there. More traditional pedagogical approaches can complement innovation education by providing students with quantitative and practical skills that can help them put their ideas into practice.

I can speak from my own experience and what I’ve learned from teaching others about design (an activity that requires substantial creativity and innovation), but this is admittedly a very narrow set of insights. What has your experience been? What suggestions would you give to the NSB or NSF for enhancing innovation?