Innovation in the Knowledge Economy: Implications for Education and Learning

Today's "knowledge economies" are seeing the emergence of new paradigms for innovation and the advancement of knowledge in relation to economic activities. This report explores some key determinants of innovation and their implications for the advancement of knowledge in a particular sector – primary and secondary education.

The analysis shows that there is considerable scope for certain drivers that have helped speed up innovation in other sectors to take effect in education. However, in practice, a number of basic characteristics of education systems have prevented innovation from changing this sector fundamentally.

Nevertheless, educational policy makers can learn much from observing how innovation occurs and how sectors are transformed in the most knowledge intensive parts of the economy.

INTRODUCTION
Today’s “knowledge economies” are seeing the emergence of new paradigms for innovation and the advance of knowledge in relation to economic production.

This is not because either knowledge or innovation are new ingredients of economic growth. Rather, against a background of a rapid acceleration in the development of knowledge, a revolution in the instruments of knowledge and a necessary redefinition of some of the components of knowledge, the drivers of knowledge advance are also inevitably changing. Thus, the process of inventing, developing and bringing to users a 21st century microelectronic product is very different from the equivalent process in the case of, say, the light-bulb in the 19th century.

This report explores some key determinants of innovation in these new circumstances and their implications for the advance of knowledge in a particular sector – primary and secondary education.

This analysis shows that while on the one hand, there is considerable scope for the same drivers that have helped speed up innovation elsewhere to take effect in education, on the other, in practice, a number of characteristics built into education systems have so far helped prevent the nature of innovation in this sector from changing fundamentally. ...

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Most sectors and industries in the knowledge economy are currently experiencing a “Schumpeterian renaissance”: innovation is today the crucial source of effective competition, of economic development and the transformation of society.

Does this renaissance extend to the education sector? The answer must be “not yet”, to the extent that efforts to implement change in the name of “educational improvement” have aimed mainly to raise the effectiveness of the system at the margin without trying to move the system into a new era. This report aims at helping all stakeholders in education systems to consider seriously the principles of the Schumpeterian renaissance in relation to the organisation and evolution of educational activities, and to design policy actions accordingly.

The report identifies, with reference to case studies documented in the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) project, “Promoting the Economics and the Management of Knowledge”, four key factors that are becoming important drivers of innovation in the economy generally. In describing the various factors needed to fully realize innovative capacity, this report looks at the sources of innovation. ...

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