Why Innovation Fails

by Arthur Levine

We know a lot about innovation in education--when it occurs, what forms it takes, or what steps it involves. But we don't know why it fails or succeeds. Arthur Levine's goal in writing this book was to understand how change can be accomplished successfully. His focus is on what happens after a change has been adopted. Levine first offers a theory about change in organizations, based on the personality of the organization. He then examines his theory of change in a detailed study of fourteen structurally similar innovations in the experimental colleges at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He concludes with a review of other studies of universities as organizations in general, integrating his theory with other research on innovation in organizations.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2014

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Reviews

[Stephanie Nguyen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Highly descriptive and dense case study of SUNY Buffalo and its attempt to create 14 experimental colleges. The first two chapters are helpful for org theorists, however, he does caveat that this theory is not empirically tested. His one case study is not enough to generalize across other universities and colleges (although David Yamane used Levine’s organizational framework for his 2001 case studies of UW-Madison and UC Berkeley).

The middle chapters are hard to understand what was going on, who was who, and what exactly were the 14 innovations. I ended up skimming the middle chapters because trying to make sense of every single detail became pure drudgery. I think this book should have been trimmed down more featuring the most salient case study details. The book could have also been a high-quality journal article.