This explains the nature of the path well. Most people prefer the sensible path shown first, but then when they get there they will realize that they are amongst a crowd that has slogged their way there. The second path is full of perils. Many will give up. But every obstacle is a learning experience, even if they don’t get up there, they have learned more than peddling along.

What does it mean for Innovation Space

1. Not everyone will create a successful outcome – nevertheless they will more than, the cyclist
2. It takes an unusual set of skills to get there (many have to learn along the way)
3. Mentoring is more than blowing the whistle at the start and being there at the end to judge if the students have arrived and in what order
4. Normal students will choose the first path, the extraordinary will choose the latter
5. Initially many students join Innovation Space looking only at the end destination and give up when they realize that it is like the second route
6. All kinds of planning to get there becomes useless, continuous re-planning is needed
7. It is easy to judge who will get to the top in the first route, difficult to guess that for the latter
8. Through the journey those in the second route will mostly see difficulties and failures
9. Those who are team players will do better in the second path and lone nerds will do well in the first
10. When they get to the top on the second route – few will accept that they have got there (because they did not use that bicycle)

Such is the nature of innovation.

Innovation Space is grappling with the problem of selection. We have more students for our Digital Literacy Program than we can support, creating a problem of selection – that we are not sure how to re-solve.

We certainly cannot go by grades. Good exam takers are often not great innovators as their minds can race along only on pre made tracks. Those who can lay their own tracks like tanks, seem to be better able at entering new territories and  navigating the  rough grounds that confront those who leave the well paved roads.

Innovation is the fortuitous combination of unusual abilities and unusual opportunities. Every student is different with different interests and different abilities. To subject them to the same standardized test – is the choice of governments and not ours. It is known, that those outside the curve are better able to innovate and those within it are less able to. So we need to rely on skills and interests that are very different from what standardized tests aim to measure.

In the few terms we have run Innovation Space, those who fair well (produce results) seem to be those who have grit. Those who have talent are plentiful and those who are aware of it seem to be least effective in making use of it, while those who persevere learn how to learn and do stuff that others have not.