Why every university deserves its own innovation lab

A university or university college is a big, slow machine. That is not a criticism: every day it has to serve tens of thousands of students, keep exams running and handle their data with care. But that same care makes it almost impossible to try something quickly. In this article I explain why I believe a small internal lab can make the difference, what other organisations already do and where it often goes wrong.

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Stability is the job, and that is the problem

An IT department in education is judged on what does not happen. The learning platform stays up during exams, no student data leaks, the procurement was done by the book. That is exactly what you want from them.

The catch is that a small idea goes through the same mill as a large project. A lecturer wants to test an AI tutor in one course, a programme wants to know whether an app helps students plan. That idea gets an analysis, a budget request, a slot on the roadmap. By the time anything can be built, the academic year is over or the technology has moved on.

What happens next, I know from experience: lecturers build it themselves, in the evening and between classes. That is how the tools I built for education came about too. It works, but it depends on one person, and nobody else in the organisation learns from it.

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Other sectors already solved this

The idea of a small team that is allowed to experiment outside the regular operation is not new.

• Lockheed Skunk Works. In 1943 a small team led by Kelly Johnson built the XP-80 jet fighter prototype in 143 days, seven fewer than required. It worked in a rented circus tent next to the factory. One of Johnson's rules: work with a small number of good people.^[1]
• VRT. The Flemish public broadcaster has VRT Innovatie, an interdisciplinary team of project leads, developers and researchers, and an Innovatielab that tests new ideas, technologies and formats through polls, interviews and prototypes.^[2] In 2018 VRT also described an internal digital start-up of four full time staff that builds and tests prototypes with users and turns the insights into formats, products and ways of working.^[3]
• BBC News Labs. A team in which developers and journalists build prototypes together that make newsroom work easier, from speech to text to chatbots.^[4]
• The UK government. In 2011 a small team built alpha.gov.uk in three months, a prototype for a single government website. It later became GOV.UK.^[5]

What these examples share: a small team, a clear mandate, close to the people who have the problem, and the freedom to build something before it is perfect.

For me this is not a new idea. Back in 2009 I was already presenting on skunkworks projects at barcamps: start with an idea, put a small team on it, build a prototype within one sprint, then decide whether to keep it running, shut it down or turn it into a regular project. That is still exactly how I see a lab.

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And in education?

It exists there too, though it is less well known. My favourite example is the Digital Innovation Greenhouse at the University of Michigan. A team of developers, designers, behavioural scientists, data scientists and students helps tools that lecturers came up with grow "from innovation to infrastructure". In the first year, more than 22,000 students used those tools.^[6]

The smartest part of that approach: every project gets an exit plan at the start. It is commercialised, handed over to the university's IT department, or wound down.^[6] Stopping is a planned outcome, not a failure.

Swinburne University in Australia has an Education Innovation Lab where lecturers can try new technology, such as generative AI, in a safe environment and are allowed to fail fast.^[7]

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How I see such a lab

No building, no sixty page innovation strategy. A small team with a mandate:

• Two or three creative technologists who quickly build a working prototype, from web app to AI application
• A creative educational support specialist who guards the didactics and bridges the gap to lecturers and programmes
• A fixed contact in IT from day one, not only at handover
• A sponsor in senior management who backs the lab when an experiment fails

The way of working is simple. A lecturer, programme or department brings a problem. The lab builds a prototype in a few weeks and tests it in one course or one programme. Then comes an honest decision: throw it away, try again or hand it over.

Throwing things away matters. A lab that never stops anything is not really experimenting.

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The handover is the most important part

A lab is not a second IT department working around the rules. It is an antechamber. What works in a pilot moves into the regular operation, and that needs a clear agreement.

Without that bridge, a lab produces what INSEAD calls "orphan products": solutions nobody in the organisation owns.^[8] That is why I want IT involved from the start. Not as a gatekeeper afterwards, but as a partner who helps draw the boundaries and knows what is coming their way.

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Where it goes wrong

I believe in this strongly, but I am not naive. Many innovation labs do not deliver on their promise. According to a 2015 Capgemini report, up to 90% of labs fail to deliver the value expected of them.^[9] The causes mentioned most often:

• No connection to the organisation. The lab builds nice things nobody asked for or nobody can take over.^[8][10]
• No clear measure. If you judge a lab on the number of demos, you get demos. Measure how many tools stay in use and how much time lecturers and students save instead.^[10]
• An island. A lab with only technologists misses the didactics. A lab with only educationalists builds nothing. You need both.^[10]
• The first victim of budget cuts. Even Google cut most of Area 120, its internal incubator, in 2023.^[11]

There is one more trap specific to IT: the idea of two speeds, a fast team next to a slow one, is rightly criticised. A fast prototype is only as fast as its slowest connection to existing systems.^[12] So a lab only works if IT benefits from it too, for example because integrations with the learning platform or the timetable become reusable for other projects.

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Why I am writing this

This is what I already do today, just without the "lab" label. Building small prototypes, testing them in my own classes, improving processes that cost lecturers a lot of time, and throwing away what does not work. I see what one person can achieve that way. With a small team, a mandate and a good working relationship with IT and educational support, a whole institution can benefit.

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Sources

1. [1]Skunk Works origin story (Lockheed Martin). How Skunk Works started in 1943 and how a small team built the XP-80 in 143 days.
2. [2]Innovatie (VRT (in Dutch)). About VRT Innovatie, the Innovatielab and VRT Sandbox.
3. [3]VRT takes a three-pronged approach to innovation (EBU, May 2018). VRT Innovatie, VRT Sandbox and an internal digital start-up of four full time staff.
4. [4]The role of innovation labs in advancing the relevance of Public Service Media: the cases of BBC News Labs and RTVE Lab (Communication & Society, 2019). Research into how BBC News Labs and RTVE Lab innovate within a public broadcaster.
5. [5]Story 2011 (Government Digital Service). How a small team built alpha.gov.uk in 2011, the forerunner of GOV.UK.
6. [6]How Universities Can Grow a Culture of Academic Innovation (EdSurge, October 2016). About the University of Michigan's Digital Innovation Greenhouse, its team, its exit plans and student use.
7. [7]Education Innovation Lab (Swinburne University of Technology). A lab where lecturers can test new technology in their teaching.
8. [8]Is your innovation process a corporate illusion? (INSEAD Knowledge, January 2020). About the distance between innovation labs and the core organisation, and orphan products.
9. [9]Three reasons innovation labs almost always fail (Canadian Underwriter, July 2019). Refers to the 2015 Capgemini report on innovation labs that do not deliver on their promise.
10. [10]Why Innovation Labs Fail, and How to Ensure Yours Doesn't (Harvard Business Review, July 2019). Simone Bhan Ahuja on alignment with the business, metrics and team composition.
11. [11]Google Slashes Most Jobs at Area 120 Incubator as Part of Cuts (Bloomberg, January 2023). Google cuts most of its internal incubator Area 120.
12. [12]The flaw at the heart of bimodal IT (Jez Humble, April 2016). A critique of running a fast and a slow IT side by side.

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Frequently asked questions

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