Senior university leaders and management teams struggle to pivot their institutions in spite of pandemic-induced shifts in the global education industry. In a globalizing education sector, agile universities will thrive and less flexible ones become obsolete sooner.
Legacy systems and deeply entrenched academic cultures hinder change efforts. The result is often incremental improvements, instead of university transformation.
Inspired by the Accelerator Program approach at Harvard University's GovLab, this program draws from strategies of top universities in North America, Europe, as well as Southeast Asia and engages in university transformation at the board room as well as the through structures, cultures, mindsets, and classrooms.
from organizational to ecosystem leadership
from hierarchies to platforms
Futures Thinking
network weaving
vertical and horizontal convergence
Innovation Fellowships
Regenerative Circles
co-creation labs
inclusive business platforms
innovation pipelines
impact investing
community-engaged scholarship
social replication
transnational collective action
Objectives:
enable senior university leaders and administrators to introduce new mindsets and structures to catalyze change within legacy university ecosystems
accelerate transformation through student- and faculty-driven, community-engaged scholarship through the town-and-gown approach
empower key actors within the university to collaborate and generate leverage through domestic and transnational alliances
By providing third-party institutional structures such as the Office of the Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry, co-creation labs, and faculty/student fellowships, the Creative Inquiry program creates multiple parallel institutional vehicles for change, rather than depending solely on change driven by internal actors who are often hampered by internal political dynamics and legacy systems.
Jill Manapat
Director-HEED at UP Diliman
Tito de la Peña
Director of Fab Lab at UP Diliman
Advisor, Vice Provost of Creative Inquiry at Lehigh U.
Elmer S Soriano
Managing Director, Eduimpact Lab
Adrian Roy Valdez
Faculty, HEED
Wilfred Manuela
Faculty, Asian Institute of Management
Erwin Lizarondo
Coach, Social Enteprisie Startups
Bryce Fabro
VP for Partnerships
The Office of the Vice Provost of Innovation and Social Impact injects authorization and administrative muscle to do the discursive work across departments and schools. Managed partially as an outsourced service, the Office of Innovation works with different deans, department chairs, and faculty, the Office of the Vice Provost for Innovation and Social Impact creates the space for Deans and department chairs to advance impact-centered transdisciplinary collaboration while at the same time staying outside of internal professional rivalries.
Design Thinking, problem-solving, and leadership are among the 21st Century thinking skills that students should be learning in university. By doing project-based, impact-focused learning, students develop interdisciplinary mindsets and an attitude of empathy and curiosity.
Universities can serve as local think tanks and innovation hubs for City Hall and the local industry. Design Thinking courses may also be offered by universities as Executive Education packages to local industries to enhance academe-industry co-innovation.
Academic structures are usually siloed and rigid, owing to disciplinary boundaries, faculty tenure, seniority, office politics, etc. By organizing multiple small work teams connected like a snowflake, an additional capacity for complex innovation work can be unleashed. Otherwise, this human capital remains dormant and trapped inside hierarchical structures.
https://ilp.mit.edu/news/seven-things-you-should-know-partnering-university
Every semester, students collectively devote tens of thousands of hours to academic projects. Sadly, these projects are not oriented toward solving real-world problems in the communities where students live. Co-creation labs engage students and faculty in solution-generation, as they learn the content that they need to memorize for the board exams. Learning and synthesis occur as students see themselves and their academic projects as relevant to community advancement.
https://projects.qc.cityfutureslab.com/
https://ched.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/CMO-NO.-17-S.-2021.pdf
With the right guidance, many undergraduate students can co-author publishable journal articles. The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program puts undergraduate projects at the frontiers of knowledge-creation alongside faculty.
Inter-disciplinary work is risky, and most universities do not adequately de-risk such initiatives. The Creative Inquiry Faculty Fellowship is offered to self-selected faculty members who have the appetite for interdisciplinary work.
https://creativeinquiry.lehigh.edu/mountaintop-programs/creative-inquiry-faculty-fellowships
Schools can be relevant and competent think tanks to the cities and provinces that host them. Problem sets in sectors such agriculture, health, and community development can be easily shared for students to work on.
https://projects.qc.cityfutureslab.com/
https://creativeinquiry.lehigh.edu/mountaintop-programs/global-social-impact-fellowship
Universities are complex social systems that may adapt or stay stuck in their legacy systems.
Using Harvard's Problem-driven Iterative Adaptation methodology, dozens of institutional/structural innovations can be prototyped across the university per semester, accelerating organizational learning more than incremental management improvements.
https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/our-work/pdia-for-education-systems/
Resiliency Lab
Civic Media Lab
Climate Action Labs
Bamboo Impact Lab
30,000 USD covers the three-year University Transformation Accelerator program Basic Package A.
Customized intensive programs available upon request.