By Elliot Davis
Innovations That Inspire is an initiative driven by AACSB International to collect and share the many innovative practices occurring in business schools around the world. We are pleased to share that the next iteration of Innovations That Inspire will soon be open for submissions. This iteration will feature a new set of categories focusing specifically on engagement:
- Engaging a diverse community
- Engagement across disciplines
- Engagement with business
You will be able to make your submissions beginning on October 10. Be on the lookout for an upcoming notice in LINK that will include the full details regarding submitting your school’s innovations.
If you are seeking inspiration and would like to browse the 2016 submissions that focused on four wider categories—create, teach, connect, and lead—then you’re in luck. Last year’s run of Innovations That Inspire resulted in over 300 innovations, all of which are available within DataDirect. The Quick Report tool, which collates the innovations, was recently enhanced with several new features to make browsing considerably more intuitive. This tool is accessible as a complimentary benchmarking feature for all those with DataDirect logins. If you do not have a login, or have questions related to accessing the database, please contact us at [email protected]. We also have several curated lists of innovations which are publicly available on the AACSB blog.
Using the Innovations That Inspire Quick Report
First off, if you have never used DataDirect before, don’t worry! You don’t need any previous experience with DataDirect to get the most out of this tool. However, if you would like to learn more about DataDirect in general and its many other helpful features, please browse our tutorial video series to get started.
To access the tool, you'll first need to login to DataDirect. After logging in, you will find the Innovations That Inspire Quick Report housed beneath the Benchmarking tab. Navigate to Benchmarking > Quick Reports > Innovations That Inspire Search.
When you open the tool, the system will default your report to the All Participants comparison group. This means your report will feature the innovations submitted by all those who participated in the initiative. You can create a custom comparison group ahead of time (click here to learn how), or you can use the filters included below to narrow the list of innovations by the submitting school’s various characteristics, including region, country, accreditation status, faculty count, and more. These built-in filterable options represent an improvement to the Quick Report tool and will allow you to browse the various entries in a quicker and more precise manner.
Once the 2017 (referred to in DataDirect as 2016-17) entries have been collected and uploaded into DataDirect, users will be able to select categories from either the 2016 (referred to in DataDirect as 2015-16) run or the new engagement-focused categories. Leaving all of the categories unchecked will cause the report to draw from across all categories when run.
The keyword field is helpful if there is a specific type of innovation you are searching for that isn’t filterable by the provided options. For instance, some keywords you might want to search could include “experiential,” “business model,” or “collaboration.”
The final option field allows you to modify what is included in your output table. Having the primary and secondary categories checked is recommended (and is the default option), as this ensures that you will see all of the innovations submitted based on your filtered criteria. From there, you can display additional data, such as the accreditation status of the submitting schools, their regions, and so on.
We’re excited for you to access the enhanced Innovations That Inspire Quick Report tool. Let us know what you think of the enhancements in the comments section below.
