Our case studies confirm several of the findings in the literature regarding entrepreneurs’ risk-taking. Our subjects were described by their collaborators as willing to take significant risks (both financial and personal/professional) while they saw themselves more as “calculated/ informed” risk-takers. All of our subjects also demonstrated high self-efficacy (i.e., had confidence in their ability to succeed in their endeavors), had high tolerance for mistakes and failure, and often approached the evaluation of the risks associated with a specific innovation differently from other individuals in the same situation.

While these findings document another striking parallel between the entrepreneurial educators we studies and business/social entrepreneurs, it is even more useful to examine how our subjects approached the evaluation and management of risk. Our data led us to identify several risk-related practices used by at least some of our subjects, and many of these practices are by no means typical of what we are used to seeing in education.

With respect to risk evaluation, we would like to highlight the following practices:

• Evaluating “sinking the boat” risks in light of one’s experience.When considering a new innovation, our subjects all seemed to evaluate at the very least the possibility of a “worst case scenario” and its consequences (what Brown and Cornwell [2000] referred to as “sinking the boat” types of risks). However, this evaluation took into consideration their own inside knowledge of the situation as well as past experiences of success, which often made them more inclined to conclude that the risk was negligible or at the very least manageable. For example, when asked about their feelings around taking on the leadership of an organization running a significant debt, both Donna and Pat pointed out that they were not overly concerned, as whatever they were going to do was going to be better than the status quo.
• Explicitly considering ‘missing the boat” risks and weighing them highly. It was striking that all eight subjects seemed to seriously consider the risks associated with not engaging in an initiative and thus depriving their organization or their clients of valuable opportunity (what Brown and Cornwell [2000] referred to as “missing the boat” types of risks). Furthermore, they often seemed to weight those risks more than the risks associated with “sinking the boat” risks. For example, Ralph and Lynn often mentioned that when they saw an opportunity to make a significant difference for their students, they just could not let it pass. This behavior is especially significant when we consider it in light of Brown and Cornwell’s (2000) observation that in most educational institutions, educators are penalized if they fail in an initiative they have undertaken, but rarely do they experience any negative consequences for having missed an opportunity to do something good for their institutions and/or clients.
• Conducting a risk-benefit analysis. Our subjects did not seem to evaluate the risks of engaging in a specific innovation in isolation, but rather they always weighed these risks against the potential benefits of that innovation. While this analysis was critical for all of our subjects, we noticed that it was usually conducted in a very informal way, using one’s vision and “instincts” as the main guide rather than a quantitative approach. The only one notable exception was Pat, the Dean of Nursing, who occasionally employed external consultants to do a rigorous risk-benefit analysis in the occasion of some large projects. This general lack of formal risk assessment can be partially explained by the fact that several of the innovations our subjects were considering did not involve high financial risks but rather personal, reputational, and/or missing the boat risks that are difficult to quantify and are much more subjective.

Our findings suggest that even more than being the result of a careful risk assessment, the confidence our subjects felt in taking on what others may have considered as very high risks, often came from their ability to find ways to contain or minimize the potential risks they had identified. Here are some risk-management practices some of these entrepreneurial educators used effectively – and other educators might consider, too, even if the practices we observed are all quite context specific (as suggested by the data reported in Table 11.5):

• Forecasting potential problems and developing plans to deal with them. While Donna was the only subject who explicitly articulated this practice, this is obviously an important element of good planning (and a skill many of our subjects shared). Forecasting potential problems not only helps in the risk-evaluation process, but more importantly it can enable a change agent to put into place systems to address the problem, timely, if and when it occurs.
• Doing some pilot testing, or starting small, before fully launching an initiative.Trying things at a smaller scale before investing in a costly initiative (as for example when Mary had a smaller group of teachers try out a new textbook in their classes before finalizing the decision to adopt it for the whole district, or Pat piloted some short courses in Forensic Nursing as part of the Center for Lifelong Learning to test interest before embarking on the creation of the National Forensic Nursing Institute) seems indeed a very reasonable approach to minimize financial risks.
• Reducing upfront costs (and, thus, financial risks). An important practice shared by many of our subjects was to carefully examine the start-up costs required to launch a new initiative, and creatively cut some costs to reduce the need for an initial investment and, thus, the financial risks associated with the initiative. We will return to this practice in the following section on Resources to examine the specific strategies some of our subjects employed to achieve these cost-savings.
• Strategically bringing in key constituencies in the development of an innovation, to secure their buy-in and ownership. Engaging key individuals and/or constituencies early on in the process of designing, evaluating, and launching an innovation can be very instrumental in gaining support as well as to benefit from constituents’ input at a time when change may be easier to make. Mary was especially skilled and strategic in implementing this practice, as highlighted in her story. While this practice may be most critical in contexts such as public school and non-profit organizations, where the change agent may not be able to carry out his/her innovations unless such buy-in is achieved, engaging key constituencies at critical stages is indeed essential in most education initiatives – as one’s superiors, governing board, staff, or clients are often critical to the success of the initiative.
• Working “under the radar” to avoid attracting attention that may lead to complaints or withdrawal of permission. When deciding whether to employ the previous practice of securing buy-in by key constituents, education change agents need also to balance its benefits with the consideration that one may want to avoid bringing attention to an initiative too early – especially when an innovation is particularly sensitive and its outcomes uncertain. For example, given her expectation that the teachers’ union and several of the teachers may react negatively to the idea of developing district-wide curricula, Mary did not publicize her intention to embark on this major initiative until she (a) had been able to develop a template for writing these curricula together with a small group of collaborators, and (b) she had sought the input and secured the support of the district curriculum writing committee. It is worth noting that working “under the radar” may be most appropriate and needed especially in situations in which a change agent is highly dependent on the approval of certain constituencies. This is not uncommon for educators working in a university or K-12 school context as well as non-profit organizations governed by a board of directors, but it is less typical in a small business where the owners have full authority and decision power.
• Diversifying one’s portfolio of clients and/or ventures. This practice is well illustrated by Donna’s strategy to produce meetings for both professional associations as well as corporations. Gidget’s desire to develop job opportunities for the blind outside of manufacturing (despite her initial success with such initiatives) is another illustrative example. While minimizing risk through diversification is indeed often critical for a for-profit company, and to some extent could benefit a non-profit organization as well, it is important to be aware that it does not make much sense in the context of public education.
• Carefully monitoring the implementation of an innovation, being ready to make changes as needed. We believe that the willingness of our subjects to try out potentially risky innovations had a lot to do with the confidence that, by carefully watching an innovation as it unfolded, they could spot problems and take damage-control actions before it was too late. This, in turn, affected their evaluation of the negative consequences of the potential risks they may have identified. At the same time, it required their willingness to adjust their plan for a specific innovation, or even stop it if needed, depending on the resulting insights from their monitoring.

Taken together, this analysis suggests that even risk-management strategies that were observed in only one or two of the case studies are worth knowing about, as these may be of inspiration of other educators. Indeed, we believe that the best way for education change agents to deal effectively with risk is to be proactive by: (a) identifying potential risk factors; (b) having a rich “toolbox” of risk-management strategies to draw upon to minimize or control each of the risks thus identified; and perhaps most important, (c) planning to carefully monitor the implementation of an initiative so that potential problems can be immediately identified and resolved or alternative paths chosen, if things are not working out as expected.

Table 11.3. Entrepreneurial practices related to risk

All our subjects understood that the success of their organization and the extent to which they could implement their vision depended on the resources they were able to secure and their careful management of those resources. Indeed, they all seemed to subscribe (at least implicitly) to the statement “No money, no mission.” Furthermore, each of them felt personally responsible to secure the resources needed to make the specific initiatives they were proposing a reality. And for most of them, people rather than money was the most important resource they needed to secure and then manage for their innovations – as expected in a service industry like education. Therefore, in reporting our findings in this section we found it useful to focus first on how our subjects dealt with financial resources and then how they dealt with personnel and other human resources.

Financial resources

Most of our subjects in leadership positions used good fiscal practices that are known and recommended to all educational leaders. However, in what follows, we focus specifically on those fiscal practices that are more specific to funding specific innovations (what we have identified as central to the practice of entrepreneurial educators), bootstrapping (as dealing with scarce resources is also at the core of entrepreneurship, according to Casson’s definition), and practices aimed at increasing the financial well-being of the organization (which most educators may not consider to be in their purview, yet all our subjects felt responsible for in order to achieve their mission to the maximum extent possible).

When looking at our subjects’ behavior with respect to funding specific innovations, we would like to bring back the point (already mentioned in both the Opportunities and Risk sections) that none of them would let the currently available resources determine their decision of whether to pursue a specific innovation. This is consistent with the definition of entrepreneurship as “a process by which individuals pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control” (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990, p.23). This approach, in turn, seems closely linked with their confidence that they could always find the necessary funds as well as other types of resources to support an innovation that was truly worthwhile. This uncommon attitude toward resources did not stem from an unconditional optimism; rather, this attitude seemed linked to their knowledge of what needed to be done to secure the necessary resources. This attitude, in turn, was based not only on their past experiences of success, but even more importantly on being able to rely on a set of creative and effective practices to go about securing funding for specific initiatives. These practices which included:

• Identifying and securing internal funds that could be used to support the innovation. Whenever they identified a new initiative worth pursuing, some of our subjects were very good at finding the needed funds internally – and also very confident in their ability to do so. For example, when embarking on their transformative technology innovation, Donna and her partners were able to use of the company own funds to support this initiative. Once she had established revenue-generating business lines, Gidget was also able to rely on these internal funds to pursue other mission-oriented projects. Even Mary, who was working within the constraints of a public K-12 school system, felt very confident that she knew how to reallocate or “free up” funds to support a worthwhile initiative, as in her role as Assistant Superintendent for Instruction she had some discretion in deploying funds from one account to another – and she thoroughly understood how her district budget worked. Not all education change agents, though, may have such control on their organization’s resources.
• Seeking grants. Almost all of our subjects considered grants as a potential revenue source, although the grants available to them differed significantly depending on their context and the types of innovations undertaken – a point we will return to in Chapter 13. It is worth noting, though, Gidget’s and Rod’s explicit concerns about not becoming dependent on grant funding alone. They both pointed out that too many educational innovations that had initially been funded by grants did not survive past the initial funding, as grants usually fund the start-up of an initiative but very rarely will provide on-going operating funds.
• Seeking gifts. Rod, Gidget, Pat, Ron, and Ralph all sought gifts from corporations, community organizations, and individual donors. These subjects went about this practice using several established fund-raising strategies – including individual asks, organizing fund-raising events, and even embarking on comprehensive capital campaigns. Story-telling was often used as a powerful tool to make a compelling case to potential donors. It is worth noting, though, that individual donor’s gifts were not an option for Mary as a suburban school leader or Donna as the owner of a for-profit company.
• Seeking in-kind contributions. This practice involved getting free access to many different types of resources needed to implement an innovation, such as specialized and costly equipment, expert advice, or supplies. While especially important for Lynn (who as a teacher did not have access to funds to purchase such resources), this practice was used by other subjects as well (Ralph and Rod in particular).
• Finding investors. Among our subjects, only Pat used this approach when looking for funding to spin off the National Institute for Forensic Nursing. However, this is one of the most common strategies used by start-up companies to secure funding, and it should not be discounted by both for-profit and non-profit organizations starting new business lines.
• Taking on debt. This practice was used by Donna (as she took over the debt that came along with the bankrupt company she decided to take over) and also Gidget (as she got a loan from 3M for materials in order to start manufacturing Post-it pads, in Gidget’s innovation #1). Although these were the only instances of this practice we encountered in our study, it is worth noting that it is not uncommon for colleges and even public K-12 schools to assume a debt to support building new facilities or major renovations.
• Using personal funds. We observed the use of this practice only by Lynn (who sometimes chose to pay directly for the costs required by small innovations) and Donna (who invested personal funds in the business and with her partners agreed to forego her own salary and/or profits, at times, to finance critical initiatives).
• Partnering with other organizations to acquire resources one does not have. One practice that seems accessible to most change agents in education, and indeed several of our subjects used this approach very successfully, is partnering with another organization for a specific initiative, as a way to secure resources that may not exist “in house”. For example, when Gidget conceived of branching out to establish and run retail shops, she partnered with Goodwill to benefit from all the expertise and infrastructure of the Goodwill organization in an area that was new to ABVI. Mary partnered with the University of Rochester as she engaged in her math reform initiative to enable her district to receive high quality professional development and consulting they would not have to pay for, as it was grant-funded. This is indeed a creative solution to the problem of finding the needed resources while staying within the fiscal limits of educational institutions and non-profit organizations. At the same time, it is important to be aware that these partnerships do not come without costs, as some control on the initiative is lost by sharing its implementation with others.

It is worth noting that many of the funding practices identified above are not equally relevant or accessible to all education change agents. Funding and funding access generally depends on the institutional context and the change agent’s position in the organization – as suggested by the frequency of use as reported in Table 11.4 and further discussed in Chapter 13.

In addition to looking for funding for specific innovations they wanted to implement, our subjects’ financial practices were characterized by always having to deal with scarce resources, a reality that most education institutions and non-profits share with start-up companies. As a result, all our subjects engaged in some form of bootstrapping. In fact, we observed that bootstrapping, even more than a set of specific strategies, constituted a way of operating with a, “make every dollar count” mindset, which informed how they generally approached the use of the resources at their disposal. This may also be connected with the passion and urgency of their drive to realize their vision and impact as many people as possible through their work. This typically meant that the resources available were never enough!

The specific bootstrapping practices our subjects employed, however, were quite varied and were used differentially across subjects. Since these practices are quite self-explanatory, we have simply listed them below and refer to Table 11.4 for information about use of these practices across subjects. It is worth noting that only the first three of these bootstrapping practices are accessible to educators who are not in leadership positions and thus cannot make financial decisions for their organization:

Looking at the list in Table 11.4, it is interesting to note that most of the bootstrapping practices identified had to do with making the best use of human resources, rather than other types of resources. This is not so surprising, given the key role played by qualified and committed individuals performing specific services in educational initiatives. In the next section, while discussing our subjects’ practices vis-à-vis human resources, we will come back to how some of our subjects went about avoiding the start-up costs and financial risks involved in hiring new personnel when starting a new venture.

While all our subjects directly engaged in securing the funds needed to carry out specific initiatives and engaged in bootstrapping, improving the financial well-being of their organization as a whole was an explicit goal only for those leaders who had control over both expenses and revenues. Donna (as co-owner of her company), Rod and Gidget (as CEOs of non-profit organizations), and Pat (as the dean of an academic unit within a decentralized private university), are all examples of entrepreneurial educators who had this control over both expenses and revenues . In contrast, educators operating in public schools, even those in leadership positions such as Ralph and Mary, had essentially no control on the revenue side of their budgets. Comparatively, Ron (as head of libraries) also had no control on the size of his core budget, which was determined by the Provost and based on allocations paid by the revenue-generating academic units that use the libraries. At the same time, Ron could, and did, augment the funds at his disposal through fund-raising.

Despite these important contextual limitations, we believe it is still worthwhile to identify and discuss the specific practices some of our subjects used to increase their organizations’ financial well-being, as listed and discussed below:

• Developing new revenue streams by starting for-profit ventures within the organization. Both Pat and Gidget, and to some extent Rod as well (as part of his HOST project), started for-profit enterprises within their organizations as a key strategy to develop new sources of revenues for their organizations. It is interesting to note that the main motivation for both CEOs of non-profit organizations was to become more independent from government funding and gifts. They recognized that these funding sources were not very reliable nor in their control, and changes from year to year of gifts or government funding could even cause their organizations to be significantly impacted or even collapse.
• Developing an endowment. The drive to bring more predictability and security into revenues generated through philanthropy was also behind some of our subjects’ attempts to provide their organizations with an endowment. The creation of an endowment can channel portions or all of a philanthropic gift into an interest-bearing account, from which only the interest could be drawn upon, as needed, to support the organization.
• Seeking diversification in revenue sources. Thispractice was used to some extend by all leaders in top positions in their organizations. For example, in addition to the traditional businesses served, Donna diversified her client roster by developing revenue-generating relationships with and services for professional organizations. Rod and Gidget sought to invest in different and complementary business lines, and Pat started for-profit business lines while also trying to continuously increase revenues from tuition, grants, and gifts.

All these practices suggest a good understanding of the economic drivers specific to each subject’s organization – something many educators do not even think as relevant to their jobs yet characterized all our subjects that held leadership positions.

The subjects who worked toward ensuring the financial well-being of their organizations had to wrestle with balancing this attention to fiscal issues (and related practices) with the pursuit of their mission. However, in most cases this did not seem to create a conflict, as they were all clear that the mission of the organization came first, and yet they recognized that the extent to which this mission could be pursued was dependent on the strength of their organizations’ financial positions. In some cases we could see that this dual goal caused synergy rather than tension, as well illustrated in the cases of Gidget (whose for-profit ventures not only provided the funds to offer new services for blind and visually impaired people, but also created job and training opportunities for many of their clients), as well as Pat (whose business lines not only helped some research and teaching initiatives but also provided opportunities to experiment with new models of health care and offer valuable internships to some of their students). We revisit these points in Chapter 14.

Table 11.4. Entrepreneurial practices related to financial resources

Human resources

As we examined the specific ways in which our subjects dealt with human resources, it was clear that our subjects demonstrated good skills in the area of managing human resources – , with the only exception of the teacher who had no control over other staff. These skills involved most notably: proactively hiring high quality personnel and putting “the right people in the right position” (Collins, 2001); empowering people to do their jobs while also keeping them accountable; not letting people who do not work well “hang on”; providing opportunities for professional development; establishing good communications among personnel; and growing leaders within the organization. While all these practices are critical for competent educational leaders, once again in this section we report only on those practices that have to do with engaging in constant innovation and change. In particular, we chose to look in depth at two areas: (a) identifying and empowering project leaders to oversee the implementation of specific innovations; and, (b) securing people to work on specific innovations.

A first important realization is that the more a change agent is involved in simultaneous innovations and the higher s/he is in the organization, the more s/he will have to rely on other people to successfully implement specific initiatives. Most often, our subjects focused on identifying and planning worthwhile innovations as well as securing the resources needed for their execution, but they did not have the time to oversee all the details of implementing their innovations. In fact, only Lynn in her teaching role, and Donna at the start-up stage of her company, were in charge of implementing most of the initiatives they had initiated. In all the other cases, one of their most important responsibilities was to appoint and empower the right person as the project leader to lead the implementation of a new initiative they had decided to undertake. Indeed, two of our subjects, Pat and Gidget, reported innovations that initially failed and ended up being considerably delayed because they did not have the right project leader in place.

As a result, most of our subjects recognized identifying and securing the right project leaders as a key responsibility, whenever they were deciding to initiate an innovation. They went about this task of identifying and securing the right project leaders, using some specific practices:

• Selecting project leaders who share the same vision as the innovator. This required ensuring that candidates for the project leader role fully understood and were committed to the nature and goals of the project as well as the overarching vision informing it.
• Selecting project leaders with an entrepreneurial attitude. A few of our subjects explicitly mentioned the importance for a project leader to have sufficient initiative and determination to overcome the inevitable obstacles to be encountered along the way, in addition to the skillset and personality needed to oversee the assigned initiative.
• Proactively developing potential project leaders from within the organization. As our subjects recognized the important role played by project leaders and the value of selecting the right ones, they also realized the need to develop capacity for such leaders within their own organization. They went about addressing this need by proactively identifying internal staff that showed potential in at least some dimensions and then investing in the further development of these individuals by providing them with special training and/or professional development as well as opportunities to try out their leadership skills in lower stakes projects.
• Being creative in defining the position and compensation to secure the right project leader. In cases in which the right person to lead a new initiative was not immediately available within the organization, some subjects reported strategies that ranged from training someone within the organization with the potential but not yet all the needed knowledge and skills, to looking outside of the organization to secure the person with the required skills and knowledge. Sometimes securing this person was not straightforward and required out-of-the-box solutions. For example, Donna and her original partner agreed to share their ownership of the company with a third partner, in order to secure the right leader for the technology transformation of their company. Pat created the first remote-work, “virtual faculty position”, in her school for the person that she wanted to lead the National Forensic Nursing Institute, as the candidate was not willing to relocate.
• Empowering project leaders to do their job independently but also holding them accountable and staying in close touch. Almost all our subjects that appointed project leaders recognized that, in order for these individuals to be effective and accountable for the outcomes, they needed to be given sufficient autonomy and decision-making power. At the same time, it was also important for the entrepreneurial educator who initiated the innovation to maintain contact with the project leader, to make sure that the innovation continued to develop and perform as expected or, if not, decide together on next steps.

Operating with scarce resources and especially not letting the lack of currently controlled resources stop the decision to undertake worthwhile initiatives, most often required our subjects to find creative solutions to the problem of securing the personnel needed to carry out specific initiatives. Their stories enabled us to identify the following human resource practices.

• Using existing staff whenever possible when starting a new initiative (whether by redistributing responsibilities or through extra-comp). Using existing staff in the implementation of specific innovations was still the preferred solution for our subjects whenever possible. This approach has obvious financial benefits, and in addition current staff are a known quantity in terms of vision and skills. Insiders may also have greater motivation and ownership for the innovation, especially if they have bought into the overarching vision for the organization and if they have participated in the initial planning of the specific initiative. Depending on the nature of the innovation and the amount of time to be devoted to it, using existing staff can be accomplished simply with a redistribution of responsibilities. Ron, as head of the library, did this often with some of his staff, as administration roles changed over time. In other instances, using existing staff can be accomplished through extra compensation for leading the new task. The extra compensation approach can be relatively easy to implement with teachers and faculty, especially if the task can be accomplished mostly during the summer months, when most teachers and faculty are not on regular payroll. Most of our subjects were also willing, when needed, to temporarily release the staff members needed for a new venture from some or even all of their routine responsibilities. Of course, this required using other staff members or even new short-term hires to backfill regular tasks. For example, Mary, in her assistant superintendent leadership role, often secured the participation of current teachers or administrators in a specific initiative by giving them a “special assignment” for that academic year (e.g., Teacher on Special Assignment – TOSA). In turn, Mary would hire a short-term substitute to backfill the regular position. Another advantage of this arrangement is that the reassigned staff member can go back to the regular position once the special assignment is completed and with minimum disruption and long-term financial commitment for the organization. This may be especially important if the initiative is short-term or funded by a one-time grant or gift.
• Using short-term contracts rather than hiring new staff for new ventures. Whenever the necessary human capital could not be found within the organization, such as when branching into new areas, some of our subjects were not afraid to look outside for the right persons. In these circumstances, however, whenever possible our subjects tried to secure the services of these new hires through short-term contracts (for example, as adjuncts or clinical faculty in the case of Pat) so as to avoid a long-term commitment for the institution, and limit the risk in case the new venture turned out not to be successful and needed to be discontinued.
• Creating partnerships to secure expertise and human resources that do not already exist within the organization. The problem of securing the expertise and services needed for a new initiative was also often resolved through partnerships with other organizations that could contribute the needed personnel and without requiring new financial investments – as discussed in a previous section.
• Securing the services of volunteers and using them well. A strategy accessible to all our subjects except for the business owner was making use of volunteers, although it was used most extensively by Ron, Gidget, Ralph, and Lynn. Volunteers were especially critical to Lynn’s initiatives, because, in her teaching role, she did not have decision-authority that allowed her access to other human capital. At the same time, it is important to take into consideration that relying on volunteers’ services has its own challenges, as significant effort and skills are required not only to recruit the volunteers but also to make good use of their unique talents and to ensure that they feel their contributions valued. Training of volunteers may also be needed in most situations, which in turn requires resources.
• Being creative and flexible in the ways in which key players are secured and compensated. While Donna’s case presents the best illustration for this practice, it is worth noting that most of our subjects were also willing to find other creative ways to compensate key players when needed for specific initiatives, even when operating within the constraints of traditional educational institutions.
• Using business and personal networks and connections to identify potential partners, volunteers, and/or new hires. It is also worth noting that most of our subjects, at one time or another, called on their existing networks to help them secure the resources needed to carry out an initiative they had decided to pursue – whether it meant setting up partnerships, seeking financial support, identifying the right person to lead a specific initiative, or recruiting volunteers. Our subjects did not hesitate to tap into their social capital to gain the support and buy-in they needed for specific initiatives. And several of our subjects also did not hesitate making new contacts with individuals or organizations that they did not already know but they thought could be helpful for a specific initiative.

To conclude this section, we would like to comment on the fact that the great majority of the innovations that our subjects initiated were joint ventures. Although Donna was the only one of our subjects who took on all her major initiatives together with a partner on an equal level, most often our subjects had to secure the collaboration of colleagues, superiors, employees, boards, parents, and at the very least their clients. Even Lynn, who as a teacher tended to carry out most of her initiatives on her own, relied on a few close collaborators as well as her students and their families in carrying out her initiatives. Indeed, it is very rare for an education initiative to be carried out by an individual in isolation, a point that suggests the value of looking in-depth into the practices that can make these collaborations successful.

Table 11.5 Entrepreneurial practices related to human resources

11.5. Entrepreneurial practices related to growth

Our findings support the claim made in the entrepreneurship literature that entrepreneurs are driven by the desire to grow, although, depending on the context, this growth may be interpreted and occur differently (as already suggested by Bornstein [2004] in the case of social entrepreneurs). Furthermore, such growth is inevitably accompanied by the need to make changes in the organization to deal effectively with the increased scope, which entrepreneurs need to be aware of and prepared to handle (Kelley & Marram, 2004).

The practices used by our subjects to expand their impact suggest several different dimensions in which growth can occur, and these often are related to the nature of the subject’s organization as well as his/her position in it:

• Increasing the size of the organization. This is the most traditional and obvious way to think about growth, and indeed it is most often the case that the extent of one’s impact and the scope of one’s mission is proportional to the staff and fiscal resources of an organization. At the same time, it is important to realize that this practice is most applicable to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, and to some extent academic units within decentralized private universities, but not to public schools – where size is determined by external factors. Furthermore, only education change agents in top leadership positions (i.e., owner, CEO, or equivalent) have the authority to purposefully engage in the kinds of growth that requires control of both revenues and expenditures.
• Increase the number, quality, and usefulness of the services offered by the organization. Growing the size of the organization, however, is not the only option. For example, while Ron (as head of libraries) and Ralph (as principal of a public school) did not have much control on the size of the units they led nor the larger organization they belonged to, during their tenure they were both able to significantly increase the impact of their units by increasing the number, quality, and usefulness of the services they provided to their clients. Ralph offered his students and their families health services that no other elementary school was providing. And, Ron radically changed the services his librarians provided to the students as well as how those services were delivered, to better fit students’ working habits and lifestyles.
• Moving to higher administrative positions as a way to expand one’s sphere of influence. An alternative avenue that some of our subjects chose (and that is open to most education change agents) was to take on higher administrative positions within the larger organization. This in turn allowed them more control of resources and, thus, key decisions. For example, both Ralph and Mary explained their career decisions to move from teacher to administrator as driven by their desires to impact more students and thus multiply the effect of their ideas and actions. It is interesting to note, though, that moving to a higher position within an organization – either through a promotion within the same organization or because one’s responsibilities as the top leader change as the organization grows (as it was the case for Donna and Gidget) – usually involves both gains and losses in terms of power and/or control. While higher positions and responsibilities often mean that one has more control on decisions affecting the entire organization, by leaving the implementation of specific initiatives to others one also loses valuable control on the many details that can make or break the success of an initiative and affect the extent of its impact. Mary’s case is a good example, as being Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction placed her in the number two leadership position at a higher organization level (i.e., school district level), while as Principal she was number one at the school level. As she explicitly commented, she felt that in the principal role at the school building level she had a lot more authority and power to influence what went on in her school, despite the fact that as principal she had to report to the Assistant Superintendent for certain decisions. At the Assistant Superintendent level, Mary could multiply the effect of her ideas and actions across the district, yet she had less day-to-day control of the many details carried out at the building level.
• Disseminating one’s initiatives so other educators can repeat them and thus reach more people. Moving to a leadership position is not the only option open to education change agents interested in expanding their sphere of influence within traditional education systems. For example, Lynn chose to remain a classroom teacher, yet she was able to affect students beyond her class by disseminating her ideas and practices to other teachers, who could in turn leverage Lynn’s expertise in their classrooms for the benefit of their own students. She accomplished this by presenting at conferences, publishing on her experiences, publishing innovative curriculum materials, and taking on responsibilities in teacher preparation. These roles can be easily generalized to educators operating in other sub-fields of education.

How did our subjects deal with the changes in their roles as well as changes in their organizational structures that inevitably came with growth in its various forms? The analysis of their cases suggests the following growth-management practices:

• Delegating the implementation of most initiatives to others. Whether successfully growing the size of their organizations or taking on higher administrative positions, most of our subjects had to learn to delegate some of their original responsibilities to others. In particular, they could no longer engage directly in the implementation of many of their initiatives but instead had to entrust this critical stage of the process to project leaders (a point we already discussed in the Resources section).
• Developing within the organization leaders who can take on some of one’s original responsibilities and empowering them to do so. Because they could not be directly involved in specific initiatives and day-to-day operations, our subjects in leadership positions also had to rely on project leaders, as well as other trusted collaborators within the organization, to be their “eyes and ears” in the field. This allowed our subjects to continue having a pulse of the situation and be able to adjust the course of an implementation as well as be able to identify new opportunities. At the same time, the project leaders, chosen for their entrepreneurial proclivities, would need sufficient freedom and authority to be successful in their roles as project leaders.
• Translating what one does intuitively into processes that can be taught to others in the organization. Delegating one’s responsibilities also meant that our subjects needed to be able to articulate and teach to others what they were doing effectively, and in many cases intuitively, themselves. This, in turn, meant making their thinking and decision-making processes more visible as well as developing systems, processes, and procedures that others could follow and that could be consistent across different individuals.
• Securing new facilities to accommodate growth. Increases in the size of the organization and/or growth in the number of services offered, occasionally required larger and/or more sufficient facilities to accommodate these developments. While in the Donna’s case this meant moving to larger rented facilities, in most of the other cases this involved the construction of new facilities (as in the case of Pat and Ralph) or extensive remodeling of the existing facilities (as for Ron and Gidget). And each of these facilities projects required significant capital expenses and/or accompanying pressure to raise additional funds to support growth.

Table 11.6. Entrepreneurial practices related to growth

11.6. Concluding thoughts about entrepreneurial practices for educators

The findings reported in this chapter confirm our original hunch that there are remarkable similarities between how education change agents and business/social entrepreneurs approach new ventures/ innovations. As made explicit in this chapter, the entrepreneurial practices employed by the entrepreneurial educators we studied provide a wealth of concrete ideas for other educators. We believe that becoming aware of these possible strategies can be beneficial to all education change agents, as this awareness can extend the toolkit that education change agents can rely on to work on specific aspects of the processes of initiating and carrying out innovations. The effectiveness of a specific practice, however, also depends on whether it is appropriate for the specific situation and context in which it is being used as well as how it is used. Indeed, to fully benefit from the practices identified in this chapter, educators also must devote some effort to become proficient at the practice itself – as well as learn about its appropriate contexts of use. This important point will be more fully elaborated in the next two chapters.

These results also support our original belief that educators can benefit from learning more from the field of entrepreneurship, although it is crucial to keep in mind the important differences that exist between the fields of education and business. For example, rather than always trying to reinvent the wheel, we may want to look at what has been written about the issues associated with dealing with the growth of the organization in the field of entrepreneurship, and then consider which of the strategies and solutions recommended for growing businesses may have relevance to educational leaders who have increased the size or services offered by their organizations. We think that educators will be surprised to discover how useful and inspirational this “cross-fertilization” of approaches between business entrepreneurship and educational innovation/educational entrepreneurship can be.