An important notion driving Hive NYC is that the network can serve both “R&D and retail” functions, as Mozilla Foundation director Mark Surman put it – that it can act as a space for development, iteration and circulation of learning innovations. Early research the Lab has conducted confirms that it does serve these functions, but we need to know more about the ways the innovation infrastructure of the Hive NYC works in order to better support it. This Hive Research Lab study addresses this “networked innovation” premise of the Hive NYC through ethnographic approaches that provide rich descriptions of the ways in which technologies, theories, practices and program models (i.e., innovations) are ideated, iterated and circulated within the network, and survey-based approaches that map the development and spread of innovations over time and connect this spread to different variables. The objective of this work is to provide insight into how to best support effective development of the Hive NYC, and future Hives, as infrastructures for learning innovations.
Guiding questions: What can we learn about regional educational networks in terms of how they can best support development, iteration and circulation of learning innovations?
Moreover:
- What mechanisms, practices and infrastructure are at play in ideation, iteration and circulation of learning innovations within the Hive NYC Learning network? What barriers inhibit development and circulation of innovations across organizations?
- Which and to what extent are learning innovations, in the form of ideas, practices and technologies, spreading within the Hive NYC Learning Network?
- How can individual organizations and the Hive NYC network writ large effectively design infrastructure and approaches that support ideation, iteration and circulation of learning innovations within the network?
Hive Research Lab 