Last week, in an #isedchat about overcoming barriers to innovation, Mark Crotty suggested setting up skunkworks:
Wikipedia defines a skunkworks as “a small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation.” According to The Economist, the term originated during WWII at Lockheed as a name for the secret team “removed from the corporate bureaucracy and encouraged to to ignore standard procedures in the hope that they would come up . . . with a high-speed fighter plane that could compete with those produced in Germany.”
Could your school use a skunkworks? Here’s what strikes me as powerful about the concept:
Could your school use a skunkworks? Here’s what strikes me as powerful about the concept:
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| Lockheed's Skunkworks Logo |
Skunkworks are collaborative
Working in teams distributes learning, problem-solving, and accountability. Enough said.
Skunkworks are nimble
By operating outside existing structures, skunkworks encourage innovative thinking that might not survive otherwise. Furthermore, skunkworks innovations don’t need buy-in across the entire organization in order to earn a trial; they can actually generate buy-in during a trial.
Skunkworks are bottom-up
School leaders aren’t going to effect lasting change by pounding it down onto the heads of colleagues. A skunkworks begins with leadership’s vision, but operates through the ideas of individuals on the ground, cultivating innovative mindsets, shared responsibility, and institutional pride.
How should your skunkworks work?
Have you tried Design Thinking? It’s not just for students.
A skunkworks can’t fear failure. Consider Google X, the skunkworks with which the search-giant trusts its moonshot thinking. “Failure is not precisely the goal at Google X, writes Fast Company’s Jon Gertner. “But in many respects it is the means.”
Each new idea goes before a Rapid Evaluation Team whose essential task is to naysay. Maybe the idea’s not possible; maybe it’s just not worthwhile. (In a school setting, maybe it’s inappropriate cognitively, developmentally, etc.). If the idea survives, it proceeds to prototyping. If not, “‘When we let it go, it's a positive thing,’" says Rich Devaul, the head of Rapid Eval (quoted in Gertner). "‘We're saying, 'This is great: Now we get to work on other things.'"
By balancing moonshot thinking with Rapid Eval, writes Gertner, “Google X tries hard to remain on the practical side of crazy.”
Who should be on your skunkworks?
As a company, Google deeply values research expertise. But the skunkworks at Google X relies on a different kind of expertise:
‘The classic definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing,’ says DeVaul [quoted in Gertner]. . . . ‘What we want, in a sense, are people who know less and less about more and more.’
These sound to me like the networked thinkers Steve Valentine describes as essential to innovative teams: “In addition to finding solutions to problems,” he writes, “being networked encourages a mindset of inquiry, which in turn prepares one to make connections and see possibilities in one's work. . . . Someone on your team has to be exhilarated, always, by what’s possible.”
What should your skunkworks work on?
At King, we’re dedicated to creating the next generation of personalized teaching and learning. What are the unique mission and vision at your school? Innovation has to start there.
Though the first two criteria for Google X moonshot ideas (must affect billions; must resemble science fiction) may be grander than what we need, the last is instructive: “any Google X idea that hinges on some kind of new development in material science cannot proceed.”
Education has its sciences too: cognitive, developmental, behavioral, etc. Our skunkworks may not need narrowly focused research experts, but neither can they ignore data and research, which set measures and frameworks for responsible innovation. Our missions are not-for-profit, and our products are not technology; students’ futures lie in the balance.
Is anyone doing this right now?
Keep an eye on the Andover Institute, at Phillips Academy. For our Klingenstein PSL capstone project this year, a colleague and I had the privilege to shadow Head of School John Palfrey, no stranger to tech-sector innovation, who clued us in to this part of their emerging strategic plan. My favorite part? Fellowships granting faculty members time to innovate.
Have you tried Design Thinking? It’s not just for students.
A skunkworks can’t fear failure. Consider Google X, the skunkworks with which the search-giant trusts its moonshot thinking. “Failure is not precisely the goal at Google X, writes Fast Company’s Jon Gertner. “But in many respects it is the means.”
Each new idea goes before a Rapid Evaluation Team whose essential task is to naysay. Maybe the idea’s not possible; maybe it’s just not worthwhile. (In a school setting, maybe it’s inappropriate cognitively, developmentally, etc.). If the idea survives, it proceeds to prototyping. If not, “‘When we let it go, it's a positive thing,’" says Rich Devaul, the head of Rapid Eval (quoted in Gertner). "‘We're saying, 'This is great: Now we get to work on other things.'"
By balancing moonshot thinking with Rapid Eval, writes Gertner, “Google X tries hard to remain on the practical side of crazy.”
Who should be on your skunkworks?
As a company, Google deeply values research expertise. But the skunkworks at Google X relies on a different kind of expertise:
‘The classic definition of an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing,’ says DeVaul [quoted in Gertner]. . . . ‘What we want, in a sense, are people who know less and less about more and more.’
These sound to me like the networked thinkers Steve Valentine describes as essential to innovative teams: “In addition to finding solutions to problems,” he writes, “being networked encourages a mindset of inquiry, which in turn prepares one to make connections and see possibilities in one's work. . . . Someone on your team has to be exhilarated, always, by what’s possible.”
What should your skunkworks work on?
At King, we’re dedicated to creating the next generation of personalized teaching and learning. What are the unique mission and vision at your school? Innovation has to start there.
Though the first two criteria for Google X moonshot ideas (must affect billions; must resemble science fiction) may be grander than what we need, the last is instructive: “any Google X idea that hinges on some kind of new development in material science cannot proceed.”
Education has its sciences too: cognitive, developmental, behavioral, etc. Our skunkworks may not need narrowly focused research experts, but neither can they ignore data and research, which set measures and frameworks for responsible innovation. Our missions are not-for-profit, and our products are not technology; students’ futures lie in the balance.
Is anyone doing this right now?
Keep an eye on the Andover Institute, at Phillips Academy. For our Klingenstein PSL capstone project this year, a colleague and I had the privilege to shadow Head of School John Palfrey, no stranger to tech-sector innovation, who clued us in to this part of their emerging strategic plan. My favorite part? Fellowships granting faculty members time to innovate.
