Lessons Learned

CHAPTER 14.

Conclusions: The potential of entrepreneurship for education revisited

Raffaella Borasi & Andrew F. Wall

 

14.1. Revisiting the value of assuming a pragmatic standpoint

This book has explored the potential of entrepreneurship to support educators committed to improving education by undertaking specific innovations.  We started with the premise that such a potential exists, and in this final chapter we want to revisit and elaborate on this premise in light of the empirical findings of the case studies of entrepreneurial educators reported in the previous chapters.

First, we want to start with a reminder that change – to meet new students’ needs, changing world conditions, and prior educational shortcomings – has become a central theme of educational leadership.  Education is continually called upon to evolve, grow and ultimately to change to better satisfy the perceived educational needs of our time (Hursh, 2007; Powell & Snellman, 2004).  Yet this need for change occurs in an educational context that is perceived as resistant to lasting systemic change, for reasons that are varied and complex, and include among other things the need to work with scarce resources as well as in opposition to prevailing forces such as local or self-governance, strong teacher unions, or even just the strength of tradition.

Throughout this e-book we have argued that entrepreneurship can provide an avenue to meet the many challenges of promoting needed change in education. At the root of entrepreneurship is the notion that an individual can make a difference by creating something new, which may involve the formation of a new organization or more often an innovation within an existing organizational structure.  Entrepreneurship can be seen to be instigated by an individual (as in Schumpeter’s view) or growing out of organizational context requiring action (closer to Schultz’s view). The potential of applying entrepreneurial thinking to education is compelling – that is, suggesting the potential of an individual or organization to create, innovate and transform for the purpose of improving education and ultimately add value to students’ lives.

At the same time, the potential of entrepreneurial thought and action in education is not without its risks and pitfalls.  The application of market or market-like behavior, as is implied in the application of entrepreneurial ideas (which have been historically linked to business practice) to education has been seen by some to undermine the public good or social justice purposes of education, as it could signify the movement of education toward market-based ideals, and in so doing emphasize a view of education that serves the purposes of the global marketplace above all else (e.g., Slaughter & Rhodes, 2004).  In contrast, Clark (1998) argues that entrepreneurial adaptations to changing educational context is necessary and not inherently in contradiction with core academic values associated with student opportunity, learning and social justice.  In support to the latter position, the stories reported in this book suggest that the application of entrepreneurial ideas in education is not inherently market-oriented, but rather it is ultimately the direction of change promoted by educational entrepreneurship that matters for how education will evolve to serve society, be it more or less toward the public good or market-oriented elements of society.

Consistent with this position, we would like to characterize the approach to entrepreneurship taken in this book as beginning with a highly pragmatic premise – that is, that promoting innovations is needed to help improve education and individual lives, and therefore education change agents should become better at initiating and carrying out innovations that are both worthwhile and successful.  The educators portrayed in this book seem to have shared a similar pragmatic assumption, as they recognized that the work they wanted to do called for them to take initiative, which in turn required them to be concerned with new ideas for innovations as well as the resources needed to put these ideas into practice.  Indeed, the examples reported in this book are of pragmatists, not idealists.

Assuming this basic pragmatic stance, in this final chapter we summarize key findings of our study and their implications for education change agents.  More specifically, in what follows we will examine the important roles that innovations can play in education in light of our subjects’ stories, the value of judiciously employing the entrepreneurial practices identified in Chapter 11, how context matters yet entrepreneurial behavior can occur in all educational institutions and positions, and how synergy can be achieved between mission and fiscal responsibilities. We then conclude the chapter with some considerations about what it may take for educators to learn about and from entrepreneurship, so as to capitalize on the potentials we have uncovered to increase educators’ effectiveness in starting and carrying out value-adding innovations and, by doing so, improve education for the public good.


14.2. Innovations can make a difference in education

As documented throughout the previous chapters, each and every one of the featured innovations added value and ultimately enabled the organization to better serve its clients, thus contributing somewhat to the significant change that each of our subjects was able to achieve by the end of his/her career.  At the same time, it is important to note that in each case the educational change achieved could never be attributed to any one particular innovation, but rather was the result of the accumulation of innovations overtime – as our subjects were relentless in their efforts to pursue their vision to the maximum extent possible, and continuously sought and took on opportunities for innovation to achieve that ideal.

That said, there is value in looking across the many different innovations our subjects initiated so as to identify complementary types of innovations that educators could consider to support their efforts towards educational change. As discussed in Chapter 12, these types include:

  1. Creating a new organization – whether for-profit or not-for-profit – which may be considered the prototypical example of entrepreneurial activity, but is also rare.
  2. Starting long-term ventures within an organization – which fits definition of entrepreneurship focusing on creating “enterprises” and could take a number of different forms (most notably involving starting a new branch, new business lines, new instructional programs or other new “supporting” services).
  3. Taking on one-time value-adding initiatives – which may not fit traditional definitions of entrepreneurship, yet are innovations that can bring great value and be transformative (such as facilities projects, publications, innovative learning experiences, other one-time high-impact initiatives – and even discontinuing obsolete initiatives).
  4. Developing new practices, norms and culture – which also may not fit most traditional definitions of entrepreneurship, yet are at the core of institutional change and thus may be particularly powerful as well as challenging.

It is also interesting to note that, with very few exceptions (such as Donna’s and Ron’s technology transformations) the innovations described in this book would be considered “sustaining” rather than “disruptive” by Christensen and his colleagues.  Yet this does not take away from the value these sustaining innovations added to the organization and its clients – therefore, we would argue that it is worth to pay attention to how all these types of innovations can be carried out successfully by educators.

Regardless of the specific category the examples included in this book could be identified with, however, all the innovations we reported on were laced with leadership visions associated with maximizing learning and individual growth towards a better world.  Visions of betterment included Ralph’s efforts related to reducing lead poisoning or Gidget’s efforts to create new job opportunities for individuals with disabilities so that they could be self-sufficient and contribute to society. Thus the innovations featured in this study could be best described as value-directed toward humanistic rather than economic ends.  This also meant that the measures of success of the entrepreneurial efforts of our case study subjects – and, indeed, most educational innovations – were often ambiguous and difficult precisely because the metric of success was centered more on human betterment than the organizational bottom line (though that might have also been an important auxiliary measure of success).

When taken together, these findings confirm our initial premise that, despite its obvious limitations, there is a value to individual agency in education and that assuming an entrepreneurial approach focused on promoting value-adding innovations will encourage such a behavior and benefit the field.


14.3. Using entrepreneurial practices can contribute to the success of innovations

Once we recognize that engaging in value-adding innovations can indeed be instrumental to promoting educational change, it becomes obvious that educators should learn to become more effective at initiating and carrying out innovations. This seems especially important as the history of education unfortunately offers many more examples of innovations that failed than innovations that succeeded and, while some degree of failure has to be expected (as concluded when discussing risk in Chapter 11), given their limited resources educators cannot afford to squander them in too many false starts.

As stated from the beginning, a main goal of our systematic cross-case analysis was to identify a set of entrepreneurial practices that our subjects used effectively when engaging in innovations, and other educators could consider using as well to increase the chances of success of their own innovations.   As articulated in Chapter 11, and summarized in the tables concluding each section of that chapter, our study specifically identified a rich set of practices to deal more effectively with each of the following areas:

  • a. Vision: (a1) using one’s vision as a guide and filter when making critical decisions regarding an innovation, and (a2) communicating that vision effectively to key constituencies so as to ensure their buy-in (see Table 11.1).
  • b. Opportunities: (b1) recognizing opportunities for innovation, (b2) evaluating which of those opportunities are worth pursuing, and (b3) acting on the opportunities deemed worthwhile (see Table 11.2).
  • c. Risk: (c1) evaluating the risks related to engaging in a specific innovation, and (c2) managing those risks (see Table 11.3).
  • d. Resources: (d1) Securing the funds needed to implement specific innovation, (d2) bootstrapping to make the most use of the resources available, (d3) increasing the organization’s revenues (so as to have more resources to support innovation), (d4) appointing and nurturing project leaders, and (d5) securing the personnel needed to work on specific innovations (see Tables 11.4 and 11.5).
  • e. Growth: (e1) Increasing the scope and impact of one’s successful innovations (when appropriate) and (e2) dealing with the changes brought about by growth (see Table 11.6).

Many of the entrepreneurial practices identified in this study have parallels to ideas present in transformational leadership and contingency leadership theory among others (Burns, 1978; Kezar, Carducci, & Contreras-McGavin, 2006).  For instance, vision-communication practices such as making other people feel their dreams can be reached through the vision, or developing credibility and trust with people to gain support, are similar in concept to dimensions of transformational leadership.  Similarly, practices that suggest different approaches to evaluating the risk of an innovation, along with making decisions about when to stop or sustain a specific effort, are conceptually congruent with engaging in leadership that fits the context and is contingent in its action (Kezar, Carducci, & Contreras-McGavin, 2006).).  These similarities point toward how concepts of leadership and entrepreneurship are intertwined and interconnected; good leadership surely is a component of adopting entrepreneurial practices, whether they are related specifically to vision or resources.

At the same time, it is also important to note that some of the practices we identified – especially in the areas of opportunities, risk and growth – set our subject apart from most other educational leaders we know, even successful ones.  In particular, this seems connected with their differential evaluation of “missing the boat” versus “sinking the boat” risks, which in turn affects their approach to opportunities for innovation and their willingness to pursue worthwhile innovations even when they do not have all the resources in hand at the start.  Other notable differentiating elements were our subjects’ willingness to embark in an innovation while being open and ready to make modifications as they went along, as well as their drive to increase the “sphere of influence” of their innovations.  All these elements, in the end, seem to come back to the passion our subjects felt for their mission and the urgency they felt in achieving their vision – always ultimately with a higher purpose towards the public good.

While we offer our findings with respect to entrepreneurial practices to help educators become better at promoting innovations, it is important to clarify that they are not intended as a “prescription” for entrepreneurial practice, but rather as a set of concrete tools that educators could use as they consider, enter into, and move through a risky venture that is grounded in their educational vision.  We fully recognize and appreciate that an educator’s use of entrepreneurial practices must be done taking into consideration the complex organizational dynamics within which s/he is operating – a point made in Chapter 13, and which we will elaborate in the next section.  In fact, the results of our study (as documented in the tables reported in Chapter 13) point to the nuanced and differentiated application of entrepreneurial practices by our subjects and suggest that a specific entrepreneurial practice may not be effective in all situations.  Rather, the adoption of any of the entrepreneurial practices we identified should occur with consideration of the organizational context in which an individual is working as well as the specific type of innovation undertaken.  In this manner, employing entrepreneurial practices becomes one the tools available to educators as they pursue their educational change goals.  Adopting entrepreneurial practices as part of a broader educational toolbox will also help guarding against holistic fads like adoption of practices from business or other settings as the “answer” to the challenges of education.


14.4. Entrepreneurial behavior is possible in all educational institutions and positions – although context matters

The stories featured in this book are proof that entrepreneurial behavior is possible – and powerful – across all educational institutions and positions within those institutions.  Indeed, we purposefully chose subjects who operated in educational contexts that included for-profit companies, non-profit organization, private universities and K-12 public schools. Furthermore, while most of our subject held the top leadership position in their unit (i.e., owner in the case of Donna, CEO in the case of Rod and Gidget, dean of a professional school for Pat, head of the libraries, or principal for Ralph), others did not (as Mary was Assistant Superintendent and Lynn was a teacher with no leadership position).  In fact, with the exception of the business owner, even the unit leaders in our set reported to people higher up in their organization, and/or to a Board.

The lesson to be learned from these stories is that many different individuals from different places in organizations can advance innovation through entrepreneurial action.  One need not start a new school, or even be the head of a school district, president of a university or CEO of a company, to be entrepreneurial. It is not the position of an individual that is important to foster organizational change and innovations; rather, what is most important is the adoption of an entrepreneurial approach and practices appropriate to one’s organizational context. At the same time, each subject’s organization and his/her position within it greatly affected how our subjects could be entrepreneurial, including but not limited to the specific entrepreneurial practices they were able to use effectively – as discussed in the previous section and further elaborated below.

First of all, for-profit companies and non-profit organizations are more likely to provide the kind of norms and structures that are supportive to entrepreneurial behavior, such as a shared vision and commitment to the mission, having informal lines of communications that facilitate getting information to those who need it when they need it, personnel that is committed to “do what it takes” to implement the mission, culture and structures that encourage innovation and creativity, high tolerance for risk and mistakes, decentralized decision-making system, and flexible budgeting that looks at potential revenues as well as costs.  This is especially the case when starting a new organization, or even a new branch/unit within the organization, as this allows the establishment of a new set of norms and expectation without having to fight already entrenched ones.

Unfortunately, most traditional educational institutions – such as universities and K-12 schools, and especially public ones – do not share these norms and values.  And while Pat and Ron were able to leverage some characteristics of a decentralized private university (such as decentralized decision-making system and budgeting) to support their entrepreneurial actions, they still had to fight other impeding factors.  At the same time, our subjects were able to leverage other characteristics of educational organizations – the fact that they operate as loosely coupled systems and a professional bureaucracy – to their advantage in support of their innovations.  Although it may at first seem counter-intuitive, an organization where employees have considerable latitude in their day-to-day action as to how they follow organizational directives (loosely coupled system) and they have considerable autonomy of action based upon assumptions of professional competency – as illustrated for example by school teachers and college faculty members or administrators (professional bureaucracy) – allows room for individual agency.  At the same time, to take full advantage of this potential, some of our subjects needed (and were able) to create “entrepreneurial spaces” within their organization that were less encumbered by traditional bureaucratic and culturally normative forces and, thus, provided powerful locations of innovation.  Some interesting examples of those spaces are provided by Pat’s Center for Nursing Entrepreneurship (a specific organizational place that existed within the University system, but was not confined by a faculty labor market reward structure and thus allowed staff more freedom to explore fee-for-service work that became the bedrock of the School of Nursing’s entrepreneurial efforts) and Lynn’s classroom (where she took advantage of the professional autonomy afforded teachers in a classroom, within the limits imposed by her school and district – which unfortunately became progressively more constraining overtime as the accountability movement took hold – to professionally self-define her classroom as a place of exploration and innovation).

Throughout these considerations we can see again the value of agency at play, as each entrepreneurial educator tried to create the best possible conditions for his/her innovations by working on organizational changes and/or creating entrepreneurial spaces, depending on the constraints of the institutional context as well as the opportunities that could offer.


14.5. Achieving synergy rather than conflict between mission and fiscal responsibility

The debates about entrepreneurship in education found in the literature (especially in higher education) often seem to imply that there is a conflict between pursuing the service-oriented mission of traditional educational institutions (such as public schools and universities) and embracing an entrepreneurial approach to resources.  In contrast, one of the greatest lessons to be learned from the entrepreneurial educators in our study is how they were able to balance the need for fiscal resources with educational objectives.

A key component of the entrepreneurial stories reported in this book was the direct linkage of visionary efforts to fiscal reality.  “No money, no mission” is the saying and such is the reality pointed to in each case.  For Pat Chiverton, without new revenue the School of Nursing would have closed, for Rod Jones the Community Place had to have resources to meaningfully serve the citizens of Rochester in need of services – and for the great majority of the stories, we can say that resource generation was central to pragmatic mission achievement.  It was also clear from the discussions with our subjects that identification of resources was central to facilitating mission success. Yet, the resources generated were seldom from traditional funding streams, rather our case studies of entrepreneurial educators suggest a set of practices that encourage identification of new sources of revenue to support educational innovation.  Perhaps even more importantly, our subjects proactively took responsibility for finding the resources needed to support their ideas. Take the case of Lynn Gatto: Lynn was successful as an innovative teacher because she did not simply wait (though she may have wanted to!) for her school leaders to allocate funds for her ideas, but rather took the initiative to write grants, do some fund-raising, contact individuals or corporations for in-kind contributions, and even use her own fund when needed.  The findings of this study capture stories of individuals who embraced the connection between innovation and resource identification to move their innovations forward.

Indeed, as the ability to create educational opportunities for all students rests upon resources and opportunity, ensuring equitable education will require both ideas and resources generation – two elements of educational practice (one administrative, the other instructional) that need to become more interwoven.  And while some tension between mission and resources may be inevitable, our subjects demonstrate that great synergy can come from assuming a more entrepreneurial approach to the gathering and use of resources to support innovations.


14.6. Education change agents can learn a lot from entrepreneurship – but what will this take?

We now come back full circle to what originally motivated our study of entrepreneurial educators: the desire to empower educators to become more effective at implementing innovations by capitalizing on entrepreneurship.  Our study has shown remarkable parallels between entrepreneurs and education change agents – in terms of both personal characteristics and behaviors. It also documented the value of using specific entrepreneurial practices to be more effective at achieving one’s goals in education, while paying close attention to unique elements of the context one is operating in.  What, then, should educators learn about entrepreneurship, and how could this learning be achieved most effectively?

To address this question, we will draw from our personal experiences as learners and teachers of entrepreneurship.  First of all, as mentioned earlier, it is important to keep in mind that we ourselves had to come to appreciate that entrepreneurship has a lot to offer to educators before we felt interested in learning about specific entrepreneurial concepts and practices that would help us become more effective at pursuing our mission.  Therefore, we suggest that college courses and professional development experiences intended to introduce future educators to entrepreneurship should explicitly address both components.  In other words, we need to recognize that embracing entrepreneurial mindsets and practices is not just a matter of learning some new concepts and skills, but it may also involve changes in beliefs and even one’ professional identity – which are much more challenging to achieve.

To help educators come to appreciate that entrepreneurship has a lot to offer to them, we suggest introducing and discussing alternative definitions of entrepreneurship proposed in the literature as a way to publicly identify and challenge prior beliefs about reducing entrepreneurship in education to starting new education-related businesses.  Educators also need to see the many parallels between the practices employed by entrepreneurs and education change agents, as well as become aware of the power of educational innovations to transform education – something that we hope reading the case studies included in this book will help achieve, as “stories” are a powerful way to influence identity development.  At the same time, facilitators of courses or professional development on entrepreneurship for educators will also need to keep in mind that lectures and readings are usually not enough to change ones’ beliefs and practices; so it will also be important to engage participating in learning activities that allows them to directly “experience” at least some stage of initiating an educational innovation, so as to at least become aware of the importance of employing entrepreneurial mindsets and practices in that process.

It is also important to realize, though, that acquiring this awareness is not enough, as the effective use of several of the entrepreneurial practices identified in this book also requires mastering new complex skills.  Building on research on learning complex skills (e.g., Collins, Brown, and Newman, 1989), Borasi and Finnigan (2010) suggested the value of the following experiences:

  • Inviting entrepreneurial educators as guest speakers, and/or having students interview entrepreneurial educators of their choice, with the goal of reconstructing in detail how they carried out a specific innovation (as a substitute for traditional “modeling”).
  • Engaging students as a class, under the direction of the instructor, in carrying out at the least the first stages of a new initiative that everyone in the class has some familiarity and investment in.
  • Engaging students (individually or in small groups) in carrying out independently the first stages of a new initiative of their choice (for example, culminating with the decision of whether or not to pursue a specific opportunity, or with a business plan/grant proposal to fund the initiative).
  • Using case discussions to involve the class in “quasi-genuine” decision-making and/or problem-solving, and then reflect on the strategies used and their entrepreneurial nature (or not). (Borasi and Finnigan, 2010, pp. xx)

Explicit reflections – whether they occur through reflective assignments, shared journals or blogs, chat rooms, or face-to-face classroom discussions – can also play an important role in conjunction with any of these experiences, by helping individuals make connections with their past experiences and beliefs, as well as deriving implications for their future practice.  This is consistent with Gee’s recognition principle in professional identity development, as he suggests the importance not only of engaging in practices and discourses at the core of the community of practice one aspires to belong to, but also of having that practice recognized by self and others (Gee, 2001; Luehmann, 2007).  

More concrete suggestions about learning tasks that can help educators develop a better appreciation for the value of assuming an entrepreneurial approach to education, as well as to begin to develop some specific entrepreneurial practices, are provided in the Learning Tasks section of the accompanying website.  We encourage instructors/facilitators to make use of any of the documents included in that section, modifying them as needed to fit their unique situations.


14.7. Concluding thoughts

The study reported in this e-book has revealed stories of entrepreneurial innovations that are engaging, bold, and ultimately assisted in revealing a set of practices that other educators can judiciously adopt to foster innovation and change in their educational setting.  Adoption of entrepreneurial tools in context does not support a rigid view of what should be adopted when, but rather asks individuals to carefully study their environment, constantly “scan” it, and adopt approaches or practices that best fit given the nature of the organization, the innovation in question, or the stage of that initiative.

Just as there is a rich history of entrepreneurship in the American business environment, there also has been an entrepreneurial spirit, albeit sometimes unspoken, in American education (see Thelin, 2004). As much as the values promoted by entrepreneurial educational practices could be a concern for education, there is ample evidence from multiple areas of education that celebrated educators have for years been entrepreneurial. Early one-room schoolhouse teachers were entrepreneurs of the prairie; the common school movement required an entrepreneurial spirit to advance building projects and public education support.  In higher education, early American universities depended on the resourcefulness of their faculty (who were also the institutional leaders) to raise funds, develop curricula and solicit students (Cohen, 1998; Rudolph, 1962/1990; Thelin, 2004).  In a contemporary setting, it is the professor who champions a new idea for grant funding, the school principal who creatively finds money to fund a new program for at-risk youth, or the researcher who translates basic research into concrete applications to improve individual lives (Mars & Metcalfe, 2009). The seeds of the entrepreneurial spirit are a component of American culture and alive and well in elements of educational practice – as illustrated by the additional stories of innovation contributed by our students as well as users of the OER resources we have created. There must be acknowledgement of the limitations and pitfalls of the application of entrepreneurial educational efforts, but there is also much that educators would lose if they ignored the potential contributions of entrepreneurship to promoting change in education.

Education needs entrepreneurs now, just as it always has, to build the schools and universities of tomorrow to meet the emerging needs of an advanced society.  We need more entrepreneurial educators to build the on-line curriculum that will become the standard summer education which replaces “summer break,” create a funding model to assist those from impoverished backgrounds to be able to afford a quality college degree, or develop new delivery systems in our primary classrooms for reading, math and science.  Yes, we need research on best practices and evidence of impact of our educational efforts, but we equally need innovation of practice if we want to successfully meet the challenges of tomorrow.   We hope that reading this e-book provided you with the inspiration as well as the confidence to take on this role – regardless of your background, educational organization, or the position you hold in it.

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