Scaling Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Across Ontario
“Every society needs entrepreneurship, to build its economy and increase its shared prosperity. No wonder school boards across the world are working to find ways to teach entrepreneurship. It isn’t easy. What’s needed is a systematic approach to innovation – a process and set of tools that help students become entrepreneurial, no matter what job they eventually hold. In my view, Ontario should be the first jurisdiction in the world to implement a systematic way of teaching innovation to every child.”
— Roger Martin, Director, Martin Prosperity Institute
The Ontario Ministry of Education decided to use the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) as a vehicle for province-wide, sector-based skill building in innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship (ICE). From their website: The Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) is a specialized high school program that allows students to earn their Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) and focus their learning on a specific economic sector at the same time. Students develop skills for their future careers, graduate high school with industry certifications and training and earn an SHSM seal on their high school diploma.
The Ministry of Education’s first plan was to create a one-pager for teachers offering definitions of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.. They first came to I-Think to create this one-pager. By the end of the project, teachers had a Facilitator Notebook, assessment tools, scripts and templates to work with a sector-specific community partner to solve a challenge for them.
Redefining Metrics of Success
We began by interviewing professionals across industries to understand how different sectors define innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. We spoke with A, B and C. What became clear to everyone is that the definitions were too varied, that a one-pager could never meet the needs of SHSM sectors across the province.
Alongside the Ministry of Education, we co-created new metrics of success. We needed a framework that:
Could be used to solve problems across sectors with community partners
Highlighted career opportunities within the sector
Could be facilitated by a teacher and/or a community partner
Designing for Scale
At I-Think we leverage the frameworks of Integrative Thinking, Design Thinking and Playing to Win strategy. We felt that the way Design Thinking was being taught at the Rotman School of Management, was the best framework for ICE. Business Design was taught in three stages, with some adaptations for a high school audience. We created the 3 Gears of Innovation.
The underlying premise of the 3 Gears is that successful innovation begins with an unmet need in the world. Ideas are generated and prototyped to meet that unmet need. Finally, a strategy is built to support those ideas in a sustainable way over time. The focus on the user is crucial to innovation because it requires us to solve problems for the people impacted, not simply the organization alone.
Innovations are meant to add meaningful value to people’s lives.
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The 3 Gears are:
1) Empathy & Need Finding
2) Ideation & Prototyping
3) Strategy & Testing
Empathy & Need Finding
The Gears begin with a user need. Empathy is the ability to understand what another person feels and to see the world from his or her perspective. In order to find an unmet user need in the world, it is essential to understand the world from the user’s perspective. The process of seeking unmet needs is simply called need finding.
Ideation & Prototyping
The next stage of the process involves determining how to resolve the unmet need. Ideation – a process for generating and developing ideas – defines this phase of rapid development. Prototypes of key ideas are constructed in order to encourage idea sharing. Integral to the prototyping stage is the generation of rich feedback and the co-creation with key stakeholders to improve on the idea from its earliest stages.
Strategy & Testing
The goals of strategy and testing are to design systems and make choices that support an innovation, sustainably and competitively, and to test the assumptions behind those choices. Strategy is a set of choices an entrepreneur makes to achieve a desired outcome. Testing is a process of exploring the assumptions of a given strategy so that entrepreneurs can take action to make their innovation successful.
Alongside, developing the framework, we used this time to speak with teachers about their trepidations with a mandatory program like this. They shared several concerns with the top ones being finding a community partner and knowing the right thing to say.
Built for Sustainability
The project hand-off included a Facilitator Notebooks, a script, slides, and templates to facilitate the experience, assessment tools and a series of videos for teachers, including one from professionals across sectors speaking about why they want to be community partners. Every SHSM teacher across the province has access to these materials.
“The Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship (ICE) element of the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) program was delivered to 2,000 students in 2014-15. The new program was a partnership between the government and the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. The government is investing an additional $1 million in 2015-16 to support expansion of the ICE component of the SHSM program.” - Government of Ontario, 2015 Ontario Budget
The Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship program was included in the Government of Ontario budget to create the conditions for scale. A decade later, over 50,000 students have an ICE experience every year.
