League for Innovation in the Community College January 2019 | Page 14

INSIGHTS INTO HIGHER EDUCATION INNOVATION:
How Institutions Organize and Prioritize
to Spur and Increase Innovation
T
BY MINDY FELDBAUM AND MARCY DRUMMOND
oday’s financial, political, and higher education will need to remain agile and adept at continually evolving
environment poses unprecedented challenges. Public their programs, services, and business models. In essence,
financial support and trust in quality, productivity, and institutions and practitioners need to develop the capacity to
value is eroding. Changing student demographics necessitate be innovative—spurring change that creates a new dimension
different models and solutions that new, burgeoning of performance; adds significant and meaningful value at scale;
investments in learning technologies and alternative providers and holistically, measurably, and equitably impacts institutional
are delivering. Moreover, the 4 th Industrial Revolution— and student success.
an era of digitalization and the connected enterprise—is
fundamentally changing what and how we learn and work.
The League for Innovation and partner, The Collaboratory,
are interested in knowing how community colleges are being
This predicament leaves higher education leaders and organized to spur and increase innovation and begin to learn
practitioners having to figure out how to manage their own from those who are becoming more innovation-focused.
destinies, achieve future goals through new funding strategies, Toward that aim, a short survey was distributed to individuals
and change the way they do business by providing enhanced at League member colleges in fall 2018. Presidents (49%); vice
services and innovative solutions while increasing student presidents, senior executives, or equivalent (35%); directors or
success and eliminating achievement gaps. And, given the equivalent (8%); deans, managers, or equivalent (6%); and staff
rapid pace of changing technologies, regional and state members (2%) from sixty-five institutions participated in the
economies, market and workplace conditions, and learner survey. A few key findings are featured on page 13. Access the
characteristics and preferences, colleges and universities full report at www.league.org/node/19052.
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League for Innovation in the Community College Innovatus