Building Innovation.

I recently came across a document titled Building Innovative Vocational Education and Training Organisations by Victor Callan and believe it has some significant points for TAFESA and in particular at this time of repositioning. The NCVER document looks at three questions which relate to the practices of leading innovative organisations, what are VET providers doing to encourage innovation and what strategies are being adopted to create and nurture further innovation.

It highlights the fact that innovation has more to do with individuals who display a flare and imagination for innovation rather than a strategic approach. TAFE's across Australia tend to be traditionally conservative and do not encourage risk taking and as such minimise the implementation of new ideas. This is opposite to much of the retoric being used by many organisations who do see themselves as supporting innovation. There are a number of examples of innovative practice in the document and provides some practical steps that could be used by an organisation to create an innovative culture. These include:

• Bringing new ideas into the organisation, encourage staff to attend conferences and workshops, join professional groups and to bring in outside experts who have a different or new opinion about issues.
• Provide seed funding which can be applied to initiate new projects. Initially this funding might be limited to buying staff time to allow them to progress their ideas to some form of innovation or concept plan.
• Select and promote those partnerships that allow the organisation to develop its skills and knowledge, and to have staff work closely with partners through sharing work arrangements, job rotations and exchanges of staff.
• As an organisation, identify whole-of-enterprise issues which can best be resolved through cross-functional teams with members from various business divisions within the organisation.
• Encourage the broad concept of communities of practice, including time for staff to meet informally and socially with others from inside and outside the enterprise to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and practical experiences.
• Build the expectation among staff and members of the istitutions board of management that staff will be putting new ideas and projects to the board for consideration, debate and potential endorsement.
• Define and publicise a simple process which staff can work through to propose new ideas for initial consideration. If the ideas are seen to have merit, subsequent steps need to be outlined which involve providing staff with time and support to prepare short feasibility statements outlining the benefits, risks, and opportunities created by the innovation.
• Include within organisational websites details about innovations being considered and invite those from inside and outside the organisation to email comments and advice about how the idea might be further progressed.
• Implement recognition programs that publicly support and celebrate innovative solutions to teaching and learning and to partnering and related activities.
• Encourage innovative ideas from students through the sponsorship of "enterprise competitions" in which students can compete for cash and in-kind support to take their innovations to market.

A key theme through these steps is in giving staff time to further study, learn, develop, trial and implement new ideas. This however is usually the main stumbling block because staff are fully committed to their primary roles that have little or no flexibility in offering release time. It is interesting that the really successful organisations are those that have made an effort to allow innovative practice to occur. How long this can continue depends on the stamina of staff or whether the organisation is willing to remain open to furthering with time and real support towards innovation.