Tinkerers, learning organisations and sustainable innovation

Abstract

The contribution of the lone ranger educator who tinkers with applications, testing discarding and working haphazardly around systems, should be seriously considered. Whilst learning organisations want to be perceived as dynamic structures that recognise and support innovation in curriculum and teaching practice they cannot responsibly incorporate every technical change, new invention or application, and idea into their curriculum.

Collaborative teams concerned with responsible sustainability, should not be subjecting their ideas to natural selection. Before ideas can be disseminated through collective teams, there needs to be a diffusion of originality, innovation and thought between members of teams, and this frequently stems from the very tinkerers whose willingness to take risks and fail with new technologies is often regarded as inefficient and contradictory to organisational development.

As learning organisations embed open source and community developed software, they are finding themselves enmeshed with systems that are never complete and always being changed as the Internet magnifies the opportunities for tinkerers to adapt applications.

When learning organisations embrace the open source option instead of using proprietary licences, they too have an obligation to support and participate in the development. This development is often done within a community that exists without concerns for sustainability and responsibility but uses an adaptive process of natural selection. An important way in which they can respond to this obligation is to provide an environment where lone rangers tinkering in the developmental role of resources can function.