innovative countries – education matters!
I will say it right away that I have no statistics (yet) to prove my case, but I have a very strong gut feeling that what I am about to say is abolutely true yet not enough recognised with policy makers throughout Europe. I invite each our blog readers to contribute with whatever research material they can find to back this assumption.
Here goes: The most innovative countries in the world invest heavily in their education system, that is to say daycare, preschool, K-12 and higher education. It is NOT the countries that put the emphasis on strenghtening only the higher education.
Also, the most innovative countries would probably need to be those that already foster skills like problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration in the early childhood years.
I am very interested in learning about statistics and materials that back this gut feeling as well as schooling concepts that tell us something about how innovative kids that went through such systems become. Please contribute and we will share the results with you.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
This post is somewhat misleading. A country does not invest in its education system in order to foster a status as an “innovation leader”, but in order to achieve or maintain a superior economic status. The most rich countries foster education at all levels and stages. There is no relevant link between the innovation power of a nation and the focus level on higher education. Without a healthy and stable education system in the early stages of children’s life, you cannot have an intact higher education system. This is also the reason why students from – still developping – countries like China, Taiwan, Vietnam etc. obtain their higher education mainly from Western countries and their elite institutions.
Innovation power is a source AND a result of economic power. Real and sustainable economic power (means that the whole population benefits from a nation’s economic force, which is not the case i. e. in China) has grown mainly in old Europe and the US, triggered by key inventions and the innovation power from classic inventors and scientists like Bell, Edison, Siemens, and of course the military. Along with its academic institutions, Western industry formed a system, call it a regime which incubated modern innovators like the founders of IBM, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, HP, Apple, Boeing etc. – the backbone of the classic nation’s wealth. Than, of course, there are industries like the whole banking sector which do not truely depend on innovations. The other backbone of Western industry nations is the democratic system and the liberal idea which guarantees both economic and political freedom, and, to narrow this down – maybe is one of the real key enablers of innovation power; A thing you would not find in China, or India, which you might indicate with your picture.
Besides, I have spotted some typos in the first part of your blog post: „abolutely true“ and „throughtout“
August 11th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Thank you for the thoughtful response and for pointing out the typos!
September 25th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Let me propose that early childhood education is strongly overvalued: give families a chance to function properly and there will be no need for formalized infant training. IMHO, the dramatic changes in brain structure in adolescent brains indicate, that this period should be more clearly addressed by formative impulse givers.
From introspection, I would conjecture, that the adolescence period is the decisive period, where propensity to follow given ways of thinking, bypassing or objecting them would be programmed into adult behaviour. It is a lamentable observation, that curricula of e.g. german secondary education do not offer any materials for structuring the deviation/regulation cycle necessary for fostering innovative attitudes.
Another thread of consideration should be opened for the innovation structure of enterprises: 3M culture differs dramatically from Deutsche Bank for example. Innovation today is no more an individual “Geistesblitz” implemented by carismatic people, but a collective effort to realize something, so business hierarchies must be conceived to support these non-standard efforts.