Determinants for Failure and Success of Innovation Projects: The Road to Sustainable Educational Innovation

Robert Burns wrote: “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry”. This could be considered the motto of most educational innovation. The question that arises is not so much why some innovations fail (although this is very important question), but rather why other innovations succeed? This study investigated the success factors of large-scale educational innovation projects in Dutch higher education. The research team attempted to identify success factors that might be relevant to educational innovation projects. The research design was largely qualitative, with a guided interview as the primary means of data collection, followed by data analysis and a correlation of findings with the success factors identified in the literature review. In order to pursue the research goal, a literature review of success factors was first conducted to identify existing knowledge in this area, followed by a detailed study of the educational innovation projects that have been funded by SURF Education. To obtain a list of potential success factors, existing project documentation and evaluations were reviewed and the project chairs and other important players were interviewed. Reports and evaluations by the projects themselves were reviewed to extract commonalities and differences in the factors that the projects felt were influential in their success of educational innovation. In the next phase of the project experts in the field of project management, project chairs of successful projects and evaluators/raters of projects will be asked to pinpoint factors of importance that were facilitative or detrimental to the outcome of their projects and implementation of the innovations. After completing the interviews all potential success factors will be recorded and clustered using an affinity technique. The clusters will then be labeled and clustered, creating a hierarchy of potential success factors. The project chairs will finally be asked to select the five most important success factors out of the hierarchy, and to rank their importance. This technique – the Experts’ Concept Mapping Method – is based upon Trochim’s concept mapping approach (1989a, 1989b) and was developed and perfected by Stoyanov and Kirschner (2004). Finally, the results will lead to a number of instruments as well as a functional procedure for tendering, selecting and monitoring innovative educational projects. The identification of success factors for educational innovation projects and measuring performance of projects based upon these factors are important as they can aid the development and implementation of innovation projects by explicating and making visible (and thus manageable) those success and failure factors relating to educational innovation projects in higher education. Determinants for Failure and Success of Innovation Projects: The Road to Sustainable Educational Innovation The Dutch Government has invested heavily in stimulating better and more creative use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in all forms of education. The ultimate goal of this investment is to ensure that students and teachers are equipped with the skills and knowledge required for success in the new knowledge-based economy. All stakeholders (i.e., government, industry, educational institutions, society in general) have placed high priority on achieving this goal. However, these highly funded projects have often resulted in either short-lived or local successes or outright failures (see De Bie,