Resumen de Transformational innovation: reflections on how to foster it in engineering education systems
Roger Burton, Lizabeth Schlemer, Linda Vanasupa
This paper describes the educators’ disposition that we believe is required for transformational innovation. Innovating in thisdomain relies on interrupting existing patterns. This interruption requires the conscious recognition of patterns through an activepractice of self observation. Though self observation does not necessarily need a collective process, it is served by encountering thediversity of views present in groups. Innovation in this sense consists of a fundamental identity shift in the human system and theinnovators themselves. Unlike the processes of problem solving and process improvement, transformational innovation requiresinsight into the individual and collective attention of the designers. It also allows access to unexamined mental models andapparent cause and effect relationships. The praxis of transformational innovation within organizations looks like an active practiceof reflection, experimentation and learning within the human system. We explain the theoretical perspective, suggest a protocol tobegin experimenting with self observation for the purpose of pattern interruption, summarize preliminary results from a year-longprocess of action research involving over 25 university agents in such a change process, and comment on the limitations and risksin the protocol.
