The emerging future confirms that the current educational system, with all its industrial-age assumptions, is not one that can be, in good conscience, simply passed on to our children. Instead, the emerging future demands that today’s multiple dimensions of complexity be addressed by innovating new processes, skills, and capabilities to radically augment and/or replace our current approaches. This type of radical innovation will not result from treading, yet again, the well-worn path of traditional educational reform. Changes in action will not be enough; mental models, the way people think, must be changed. Together, we will explore a process that identifies the needs of future learners using theories from the fields of user-center design, systems and scenario thinking. In addition to identifying the needs of future learners, this process allows for the identification of the system that must be in place to provide for the needs of all learners regardless how the future unfolds.
Erika Gregory is President and Founder of Collective Invention (www.collectiveinvention.com), a multi-disciplinary consultancy that draws insights from organizational development, anthropology, architecture, design, the arts and business. Based in San Francisco, Collective Invention works with businesses, schools, foundations, NGOS, corporations, and government agencies dedicated to innovation that serves the common good. Much of Collective Invention’s work focuses on breakthrough approaches to learning, health, and environmental sustainability.
Erika’s expertise is in the leadership of strategic innovation programs. Based on evidence that transformative ideas often result from transformative experiences, Erika and her colleagues at Collective Invention design experiences—live and online—that stimulate both intellect and imagination. These include Learning2025, SustainableLifestyles2025, Life 2050 and other future-focused simulations. Erika currently works closely with Grantmakers for Education and KnowledgeWorks Foundation in a multi-year innovation process for educational philanthropists investing in the transformation of learning in America. Foundations engaged in this work include the WK Kellogg, John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur, Bill and Melinda Gates, Intel, Carnegie, Nellie Mae, Stupski and Hewlett Foundations, among others.
Since 2005, Erika has led Collective Invention’s work with the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), a regional, pre-professional arts training center for secondary students planning to expand into a residential full-day arts/academics conservatory program. In collaboration with NOCCA faculty and staff, the San Francisco Exploratorium and other national models, Collective Invention developed a framework for development of science, history, mathematics and humanities currricula.
From 1994-1997, Erika served as Director of Scenario Communications at Global Business Network (GBN), where, among other things, she produced the interactive “Museum of Unintended Consequences.” Co-Founder (1997) of The Idea Factory, an international innovation consultancy based in Singapore, Erika has long led the invention of tools to support organizational innovation. She has also been responsible for cultivating relationships—many of which have spanned years—with key clients and partners in Europe, Southeast Asia and the United States. A 1985 graduate of the Juilliard School, Erika has written, directed and produced in a variety of media, from live theater to videotaped dramatization, strategy simulations and installations.
Dr. Jillian Darwish combines her background in the fields of design and education to develop innovative approaches to collaboration, organizational learning and systems change. As Vice President, Organizational Learning and Innovation for KnowledgeWorks (knowledgeworks.org), her role has both an internal and external focus. She leads the continuous development of KnowledgeWorks as a learning organization with a culture of innovation and she also heads a team of experts who develop engaging keynotes, strategy sessions, long-term engagements and partnerships designed to help organizations across the education sector apply knowledge of future trends with organizational learning and systems change practices to create systemic innovation. She oversees the ongoing development of the foundation’s future trend publications, of which there have been more than 160,000 copies distributed across the United States and internationally.
Formerly at KnowledgeWorks, she served as the founding Executive Director for the Institute for Creative Collaboration, building a strategic consulting practice and directing Transformational Dialogue for Public Education, a long term initiative designed to help state leaders re-conceive the system of public education and which has led to significant state-based education policy reform. Jillian began her work at KnowledgeWorks as Director, Collaborative Knowledge Management leading the development of a thriving peer-to-peer learning network for teachers in 52 schools across Ohio.
An award-winning educator and leader, Jillian has taught a wide range of students from primary through graduate school, has led regional teams to create widely distributed multimedia educational products and services, and has received national recognition for the design and implementation of an organizational learning system serving a 500-member organization and twenty-two public school districts. Jillian earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning; a master's in elementary education from Xavier University; and a doctorate of education in curriculum and instruction from the University of Cincinnati.
