The Islands of Innovation Model: Opportunities and Threats for Effective Implementation of Technological Innovation in the Education System

Abstract

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of educational technology-integration projects which employ the Islands of Innovation model. According to this model, technological innovation is implemented in small islands within an organization, in the hope that they will be imitated, permeate the whole organization with their values and lead to overall, comprehensive innovation and to a new organizational culture. Islands of innovation are created through two main mechanisms: top-down management decisions or bottom-up, spontaneous local initiatives taken by enthusiasts within the organization. Studies on technological innovation implementation in education systems show that for the most part, islands of innovation fail to generate overall, comprehensive innovation. This article uses three prominent organizational theories - Institutional Theory, Loosely Coupled System Theory and Disruptive Technology Theory -- to analyze the primary reasons for these failures. It stresses the buffering effect as an isolating mechanism, detaching the islands of innovation from the organization as a whole, and sees it as the main cause of failure in innovation implementation. The article warns against the stagnation that these islands of innovation may cause organization managements, which use them as an excuse to consider themselves innovative, and warns against unsupervised, poorly thought-out use of this model for technological innovation implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]