Building innovative vocational education and training organisations

• create learning cultures which promote innovation as a core capability

• have leaders who are failure-tolerant

• identify their innovators

• reward people who bring forward innovative ideas

• use partnerships

• promote innovation through teams, teamwork and communities of practice.

• are making good progress as innovators but this progress is uneven

• have predominantly used only three of the six characteristics to build innovation: identification of innovators; partnership with industry; and teamwork

• are experiencing a gap between the rhetoric about innovation and its funding

• are needing more leaders who, rather than just playing around at the edges, want to build corporate cultures which deeply value innovation and innovators.

This report addresses three questions. These are:

• What are the practices of highly innovative organisations?

• How are vocational education and training (VET) providers currently promoting greater levels of innovation?

• What other strategies have the potential to create further innovation in VET organisations?

Central to this report was a review of past research designed to identify the key practices or habits of innovative organisations. This review revealed that truly innovative organisations:

• create learning cultures which promote innovation as a core organisational capability

• have leaders who are 'failure-tolerant'

• identify their innovators

• reward people who propose innovative ideas

• use partnerships

• promote innovation through teams.

The aim of this 'report card' was to describe how well VET providers are faring in promoting these six practices in their organisations.

The VET organisations which were the focus of case studies were the Gold Coast Institute of TAFE (Queensland); Victoria University of Technology; Institute of TAFE Tasmania, and Onkaparinga Institute of TAFE (South Australia). In addition, minor case reports or vignettes were completed for the following organisations: the Australian Institute for Care Development; Construction Training Centre; Aviation Australia; Barrier Reef Institute of TAFE; Brisbane North Institute of TAFE; Australian Ikebana Centre College of Art and English; and Workplace Australia Group.

VET organisations were using all six of the characteristics of innovative organisations to varying degrees. In particular, they were good at identifying their innovators, at developing partnerships, and using teams. Their champions of innovation typically operated in partnerships with various specialists, such as business development managers, business managers, enterprise officers and partnership managers. However, they are engaging in innovation with little time or financial rewards for their efforts. Their organisations recognise this but, with the exception of funding to release staff from teaching or other responsibilities, the organisations are still working through how to reward or more fully support their innovators.

Innovation in VET organisations is also being driven through the development of often substantial training partnerships with industry. Of the six characteristics of innovative organisations, this was by far the most dominant strategy in shaping and driving innovative thinking and practice. Industry training partnerships are promoting more flexible training programs, good financial returns and staff development opportunities for both the VET and the industry organisations. The partnerships have allowed experimentation and fine-tuning of practices, such as flexible and individualised training, customisation of training, blended models of delivery, the use of workplace assessors, and the mapping of competency development within existing workplace projects.

The use of teams, teamwork and communities of practice is the other major tool being utilised to promote both learning and innovation. Teams have reinvigorated a number of training programs which were losing the support of learners. Teams, in the form of cross-functional working groups, are being used to promote more collaborative approaches across institutions in processes of collecting, sharing and distributing relevant information to enable the needs of industry to be more effectively met. In addition, communities of practice are providing team-based structures which allow people to share stories and learning, and serve to turn implicit understanding into more explicit knowledge which can be used to solve future problems. Many examples exist of such communities of practice among teachers, workplace assessors, administrators and senior managers. Teams and communities of practice have been integral to the successful growth of skills centres which themselves facilitate innovative practices.

What other strategies have the potential to create more innovation in VET organisations? The case studies profiled here do suggest that these organisations will continue to be enthusiastic innovators, but they will need to broaden their strategies to ensure that innovation becomes a core focus.

If the six characteristics of innovative organisations in combination are proposed as the benchmark, then it is clear that the development of innovation in the VET sector is uneven. This research has shown that certain individuals and teams linked to larger industry partnerships are leading the way. Moreover, there appears to be little evidence that VET organisations have established either well-developed organisational capabilities for innovation or clear structures for rewarding innovators. Given the financial and operational constraints faced by organisations in the VET sector, this is understandable. However, there is still tremendous potential in the VET sector to increase innovation within their enterprises. They need to be serious about building and funding learning cultures and promoting innovation as a core capability within their enterprises. In addition, failure-tolerant leaders of VET organisations need to be even more creative in how they continue to support and reward their leading innovators and educational entrepreneurs.