philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Can Draper University of Heroes really teach innovation?

[Philip Lelyveld comment; Excellent idea, but where is the program for the people who are teaching these subject matter experts?!]

We do not teach history at our school, we teach the future, so we teach anything in that realm to give students a snapshot of all the up-and-coming things that we think they should know about.

“The history of innovation tells us that with only a small number of exceptions, important innovations always come from people with cutting-edge knowledge of the field they’re innovating, whereas this curriculum takes attention away from the hard work of building up cutting-edge knowledge in a particular field and turns it towards much more replicable, easy, short-term soft skills,” he says, criticizing the notion that “we’re all capable of changing the world, we just have to change our attitude and be bold.”

“Sergey [Brin] and Larry [Page of Google] were experts in information retrieval,” he says. “It’s not just ‘I’m feeling bold and courageous.’ That stuff takes hard work. You’re going to have to build the skills if you’re going to have an impact.”

But when asked about the few exceptions that become innovators without having cutting-edge hard skills, Newport mentions people like Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square, who jump right into startups and see what works, what doesn’t, what needs a new business could fulfill. In other words, Newport admits, the exceptions -- the people who manage to become innovators even if they aren't experts in their fields -- are the ones who run with ideas and see what works -- like Houng, the Draper U alum.

See the full story here: http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/the-report/can-draper-university-of-heroes-really-teach-innovation/?curator=MediaREDEF