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MayJune2015

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HOW CAN SCHOOLS SUSTAIN CURRICULAR INNOVATION? That was the question at the forefront of my mind as I prepared to write the dissertation for my doc- torate in education. While some schools are clearly better than others at developing innovative program- ming, all of them want their innovative courses to thrive. But what factors motivate faculty to launch innova- tive oerings? What must a school do to nurture sustained innovation? I found myself continually drawn to innovations that exist at a few schools but have not been replicated widely by their peers. Eventually, I conducted in-depth examinations of two innovations that stood the test of timeā€”one at Tulane Univer- sity's Freeman School of Business in New Orleans, Louisiana, What should business schools know, be, or do to encourage innovation on their own campuses? INNOVATION 52 BizEd MAY | JUNE 2015 and one at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge. By studying these, I was able to develop a framework that could help business edu- cators consider their own schools' unique attributes as they develop distinctive, lasting oerings. In my research, I drew on the work of Srikant Datar, David Garvin, and Patrick Cullen in their book Rethinking the MBA. The authors examine the U.S. Army's being/knowing/doing approach to leadership and apply it to business schools. I use that approach to consider what schools and faculty must be, know, and do to sustain curricular innovation. I have found nine precipitating factors. The more of these factors that are present, the more likely it is that school leaders will be able to sustain curricular innovation.

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