Creating a Culture of Mindful Innovation in Higher Education

Offers a vision for innovation in higher education focused on societal progress and human development, as well as for higher education's role within a broader culture of innovation.

Higher education institutions have traditionally nurtured artistic and scientific development and served as catalysts for innovative ideas and products. However, contemporary discourse too often relegates the concept of innovation to the private sector, where the rhetoric of "disruption" frequently reduces innovation to economic terms. As a result, innovations that could benefit society instead exacerbate existing inequities, and the environmental factors that stimulate long-term innovative progress are neglected.

Creating a Culture of Mindful Innovation in Higher Education offers a different vision by identifying the conditions that enable college and university administrators, faculty, and staff to promote an innovative institutional culture. Mindful innovation is defined through six central tenets: societal impact; the necessity of failure; creativity through diversity; respect for autonomy and expertise; thoughtful consideration for the dimensions of time, efficiency, and trust; and the incentivization of intrinsic motivation and progress over scare tactics and disruption. Michael Lanford and William G. Tierney offer a clearheaded analysis of the challenges and opportunities in creating a culture of mindful innovation and argue that the institutions that do so will be poised to lead entrepreneurial endeavors, scientific progress, and greater social equity in the twenty-first century.

Michael Lanford is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of North Georgia. William G. Tierney is Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. His many books include Higher Education for Democracy: The Role of the University in Civil Society, also published by SUNY Press.