great pleasure to be here I am the CEO
of a company of an organization is a
social enterprise but I’m also a proud
founder of this institution so I’m very
happy to be here and to talk about
something that I’m also very passionate
about and I care for what is it
disruptive innovation in education now
why did I choose this and is this
something that we really need to be or
not to be but this is actually not the
question the question is that we need to
do something about it and I will give
you my proposal on it so let’s start
what do poly bears have to do with this
topic well there is something that they
have to do with it and it’s part of
story I want to tell you about my
daughter when she was three and a half
years old we came back from the US where
I spent about a year working and I
noticed that I had been playing for her
different videos and music and a lot of
documentaries about animals but I
noticed at home that several mornings in
a row the pilot lights that were in the
bathroom when I woke up in the morning
were always
plugged and then I started asking who is
doing this I asked my husband he said I
don’t know and then I said Sophie I use
the one doing this and she said of
course mommy I said but what are you
doing and she said well that’s curved by
the way she said you know what we have
to save electricity because if you don’t
do this you’re going to kill all of the
polar bears that are even in the moment
where they will be extinct very soon and
what are the kids coming after me going
to do without polar bears they will not
be able to even see them I was looking
at her and I was thinking oh my god she
is talking about the polar bear she
herself didn’t see but of course her
curiosity her natural drive to learn
about the world has been sparkled by
this movies by the environment but what
by what we were talking about so this is
where I this is when I realized that
education a bringing environment are
very important for the type of people
you grow up for the type of person you
actually become and turn to in the end
and something that later on I realized
even more so is that early childhood
education is extremely important it is a
key instrument to actually form values
and to keep alive
creativity in aunt imagination and
people but also to form people and
personalities now we’ve looked at the
point of Education let’s turn to
innovation
and how is innovation related to this
topic innovation in my understanding is
something that helps us feel comfortable
when changes happen and we as human
function in an environment and we are
often shaped by it but let’s look where
and what our environment has been around
us so 30 40 50 years ago we were living
in the Industrial Age and this is what
also shaped our educational systems and
the environment was environment where
automation and task oriented labor with
framed responsibilities were the way to
work and be successful we were focused
on studying to get a job you know in the
company or to build a career around
something that we would play with the
final target also to be well-paid and
that had clear boundaries on what one
does and what one could achieve we used
to measure how much we know and how much
we read because we had the privilege of
information in those days where are we
we are in the era of the knowledge-based
and human based economy our life is
driven by rapid technological
development that appear almost every day
sometimes even if every hour we used to
call people for example on the phone and
play something then a dinner or a plan
to go out somewhere now in the last 10
years we have seen the investment and
domination of the smartphones and we are
connected all the time inevitably again
it’s part of our lives if you think the
the books of Isaac Asimov’s especially
one the Three Laws of Robotics were
predicting that we will have around us
robots that with whom we can communicate
that will be almost equally people like
us this happened what he was writing
about in the in the fifties right in the
1950s this happened only 50 years ago
and it’s now reality it’s a different
environment we are even facing personal
Bank assistance that the robots with
whom we have to do I mean to bank
nowadays and this is something that we
never planned for or expected to be part
of our everyday life we also used to
plan our businesses our lives with 10
now this is no longer the case because
the environment around us is
unpredictable it is insecure with much
more cycles that ever and even more so
happen we already know that 65% of the
jobs the generation set will have to do
to perform do not exist yet all of these
changes require a new way to deal with
them and here let me point out to you
this thought that I I love it says it
all the electric light didn’t come from
the continuous improvement of the candle
so we cannot solve and address
challenges that the part of a new
environment different environment
unpredictable with the way we used to
deal in the past because education is
really the space and the place that has
to prepare people for this new way of
living and learning in this environment
here is one example of the top 10 skills
in the 2020 and if you look at what was
there before in 2015 and what is there
now at the top of the skills that we
will have to master at the skills
related to complex problem-solving
critical thinking creativity now is this
part of our educational system
let’s go back to what education looked
like these 3040 years ago so this was
education that was predominantly
government governed by having to master
certain knowledge in certain subjects
that are were delivered through tests
and students had to spank spend long
hours in the school and they had to also
memorize content in the end what
happened schools were not the most
desirable places to be okay
you didn’t feel so free in there you
didn’t feel like you can do whatever you
it you felt you wanted to do okay you
didn’t feel that you can make a mistake
and not have to be a little bit scared
after it on how it will be perceived by
people so this is an example also of a
school that is predominantly in the
space now again in in a lot of countries
even in our country even though recently
Finland has emerged on the top of the
list of countries within the World
Economic Forum system ranking that seems
to be showing the most innovative
approach to education it seems that
their students are not studying specific
subjects they combine various topics and
different disciplines and they work on
projects they are no longer delivering
on tests they are performing
working in teams analyzing critically
and creatively and most of all schools
seem to be different spaces you can take
a book or your tablet and go and read it
take it out share you work together with
studies also show that students will who
receive social and emotional learning
score 11% higher on average than those
who did not and now how do I connect it
to innovation education and myself in my
current job I happen to be involved a
lot with dedication but I want to share
with you how this all started
and it started from here I came here as
a very young graduate recent get
graduate the University was looking for
a Dean of Student and the president
interviewed me I showed showed up in my
hippie dress at the time and the
president said I’m looking for a person
exactly like you and could you start I
needed you to start two days or three
days ago I said ok but I have never done
this I do not know what the Job
Description for Dean of Students is and
he told me you know what this is exactly
what we are looking for I want somebody
who is open-minded who wouldn’t be
scared who would actually want to try
and to experiment and to do their best
maybe somebody who is
really going to take that risk and
challenge for themselves because AVG
didn’t exist here before we don’t have
at the institution we have to make it
together I have to tell you that this
took a lot of guts on my site at the
time now I realize retrospectively
looking back because I had to stand up
in front of people who were looking at
me and saying who is this girl
and I had to pretend I have the
authority to be Dean of Students and I
did it because I really believed in
education I saw that giving people the
choice to have education free will be
something that will be so important in
their lives this also formed my knee as
an entrepreneur and a person with an alt
open and entrepreneurial self something
that I also found very much
reverberating with this is the thought
of the founder of SlideShare who says I
would rather make mistakes then
overthink and now I feel good about what
I do that is why I would like to ask you
to join me in the effort of disrupting
innovatively education why because
education needs a new paradigm it needs
a new story I believe very much in the
philosophy that Sir Ken Robinson shares
about education that it needs to become
more personalized more customized and
more democratized
and it will have implications both
economic and social as well as cultural
and personal on us but for that it will
need to be innovated and how this is the
the approach of my proposal to do it
disruptively what does it mean to do
disruption with innovation is usually
associated with business
it basically means to create a momentum
and from something which is on the edge
of innovation to slowly transform it
into mainstream and this is where we can
all work together to make it happen this
is where we can see a number of explicit
benefits and invitations on innovation
if it becomes a mainstream if we apply
disruptive innovation to education we
can turn schools into more
entrepreneurial and creative spaces we
can balance stem and arts and humanities
and interdisciplinary approach we can
work in teams and use technology we can
even make movies together and we can be
prepared for the professions of the
future we can take on the roles to go
these are examples of how we can
innovate education using digitalization
applying interdisciplinary approach also
maybe making movies this is part of the
Space Odyssey where we can see the
prototypes of Skype and iPad for this
though we will need a critical mass of
at least 10% of people to make it the
real social impact and to use the
disruptive innovation method to
transform education so I finish here
with asking you to join me in this
effort and this search and to use the
wings of imagination on that journey
thank you
[Applause] you