Can Innovation Be Taught in Schools? Experimental Evidence from India

Higher-order skills like innovation and teamwork have gained importance in the education policies of many countries today. While innovation is considered a central driver of a country's economic growth, team skills are critical for today's workforce. However, evidence of how schools can teach these skills is scarce. I am conducting a randomized evaluation of a program called 'Think and Make' (TM) in India, which works with eighth-grade students from marginalized communities in eighty schools to develop innovation and collaboration skills. Students participating in the TM program work in teams to identify local community problems in the health, agriculture, environment, and education sectors, develop prototypes of their ideas and build potential solutions. I use four methods to measure innovation skills in these children, including a novel measure of innovation developed with the help of real-world innovators. The other three methods involve – investors' grants, user feedback, and a laboratory game for individual innovation skills. Participating students belong to marginalized indigenous communities in highly remote areas that are less socially and economically integrated with the rest of India. The outside world has a limited understanding of the problems of these communities, and the Think and Make program enables the children to solve these problems by using a pedagogy that promotes a deeper understanding of the needs of their communities. By making this program a part of their formal education in school, state policymakers are making their education system more inclusive and equitable, and this dissertation research can contribute to informing those decisions.