Keynote - Charles Leadbeater
Charles Leadbeater is renowned as one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation and his expertise is sought by companies and governments all over the world. He first began to write about innovation in the 1980s as the youngest ever Industrial Editor of the Financial Times. Charles then went on to become the publication’s Tokyo Bureau Chief. Over the past decade he has published a series of best selling books on innovation, from Living on Thin Air in 1999 to We Think in 2008, which explores the way the web is transforming how we collaborate and create ideas.
In his recent publication, Learning from the Extremes, Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong examine the way developing nations are attracting children and parents to education through unconventional methods such as learning through dance and play, learning outside the classroom and learning through a curriculum that helps to solve problems in the community.
What can Victoria learn from the extremes?
Innovation invariably involves creativity and invention. Yet innovation is also a structured process to understand problems, generate ideas, prototype and test them, develop, refine and deploy them.
In his keynote presentation, Charles explored the conditions that make this innovation possible. He drew on his research about successful programs from around the world that are making learning attractive to children and families; programs that rely on peer learning, creating learning spaces where they are needed, and focusing on learning that stems from the real challenges faced by communities.
Charles brought his research about social entrepreneurship and educational innovation in the face of the challenges in the developing world back to bear on the issues facing education in the developed world. By applying his knowledge of how innovation occurs, together with the lessons learned through his research, Charles challenged participants to think about whether Victoria is ready to not only continually improve, but to reinvent and transform learning.