Falyn Strey

Ed Ldrsp 325
27 April 2016
Innovators Mindset Reflection
Innovation is a power word. Simply reading, hearing, and speaking this word bring about
feelings of empowerment, motivation, and inspiration. But what exactly does innovation mean
and what does it mean to have an innovators mindset? The Innovators Mindset, written by
George Couros, begins to provide an answer to these questions, but I believe that personal
interpretation and what you make of it also play a role in answering this question on a more
individual level.
Personally, I think having an innovators mindset is a multi-faceted concept. You
cannot pinpoint innovation on one key attribute; instead it is a culmination of several different
qualities and characteristics, all playing their own role. Some of the characteristics that Couros
(2015) mentions in his book, that I believe are particularly impertinent to being an effective
innovator, are being networked, creative, a risk taker, and reflective.
The first piece of the innovative puzzle is to be networked. This is important because it
allows you to collaborate with others in both in and outside of your field to create an idea that
you may not have thought of on your own. It allows for each party involved to contribute their
own strengths while relying on others to compensate for their weaknesses. It also provides the
opportunity to extract from others experiences without having to go through them personally.
The second key characteristic is being creative. Being creative is so crucial for
innovation, that the two are listed as synonyms in the thesaurus. We need to constantly be
thinking of new, improved methods and solutions to enhance and enrich our current approaches

and procedures. There is always room for improvement and innovation, but we need to be
creative enough to generate ideas that can accomplish this.
A third characteristic that Couros (2015) mentions is being a risk taker. This is
imperative to being a powerful innovator. You can have all of the ideas in the world, but if you
are not willing to take the risks necessary to make those ideas reality, they are fruitless. Often
times it is frightening to try new ideas for the fear of failing or being unsuccessful. However, if
we never try anything new, we may never unlock the potential a given situation has. I have a
personal example of the benefits of risk taking in the Supplemental Instruction sessions I hold for
Geology 102, Physical Geology. For the exam review sessions, I had always created a practice
exam and answered questions at the end, but I wanted to try something different. The majority of
the students loved the practice exams, but I felt that there might be a more effective way for them
to be studying. I decided for their most previous exam to create an incomplete outline and go
through it as a class. This led to a lot of great discussion and was able to answer many questions
that the students might not have realized they had if we had just done a practice exam. Initially, I
was intimidated to try something different; if this idea did not work, I would be failing in front of
fifty of my peers for an hour and half. However, through risk taking, I feel like I was able to
better prepare my students for their exam. Instead of simply knowing the questions to forty of
my practice multiple choice questions, they now had the potential to answer any form and any
number of questions because they understood the material.
The final characteristic of having an innovators mindset is to be reflective. Couros
(2015) mentions that reflection allows us to find areas that can be tweaked, modified, reiterated,
or even reinvented. Revisiting my previous exam review session example, after the session I
made sure to survey the class to see if they thought it was useful. I got a resounding yes. Even

though the students appreciated the outline review, I was still thinking of ways that I could make
it better for next time. For example, we ran out of time to complete the entire outline, so the next
time I will not make it as detailed.
The characteristics of being networked, creative, a risk taker, and reflective combine to
help develop an effective innovator and generate an innovators mindset. Each are equally
important and contribute to the overall success of an innovator.
Innovation is not only important in education with technology, as stressed in Couross
book, but also outside of education and without technology. My Supplemental Instruction
example, involves both education and technology, but I believe that innovation is essential to
succeed in all areas of life. Innovation allows us to take old ideas and renovate them. This could
be done by simply modifying the original idea or completely scrapping it and developing
something entirely new. Either way the end goal is always growth, advancement, and
enhancement. Innovation allows us to be more effective and efficient. It allows us to be able to
learn more, do more, and accomplish more. We can innovate in all aspects of our life. We can
innovate in the classroom, whether we are a part of it or leading it, we can innovate at the place
of our employment, we can innovate in our home life, and in our daily life.
In Ed Leadership 325, Instructional Technology, I was able to tie what I learned about
innovation from George Couross book into our daily class activities. The largest way I was able
to do this was with all of the different technological resources we learned about. Every week we
learned a new resource(s) that we could use for students, including but not limited to eportfolios, Kahoot, , Padlet, Twitter, Plickers, and Wikispaces. Now that I have been able to build
up a mental library of resources, it is my responsibility to find innovative ways to use these tools
and try something new. The content in The Innovators Mindset also related very well to the

Four Cs of Education that were covered in class. The Four Cs include communication,
collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking. These are all very crucial to being an effective
innovator. Communication and collaboration are both related to being networked and creativity
and critical thinking are both related to being creative.
Overall, I think that The Innovators Mindset is a powerful and inspirational book
regardless of whether you are going into education or not. It has definitely changed the way that I
view innovation. It has shown me the importance of being innovative, as well as how to be the
most effective as an innovator.

References
Couros, G. (2015) The Innovators Mindset. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.