Symbolic Innovations Lessons from Health Services and Higher Education Organizations

Organizations are often rewarded for doing the trendy and flashy, as the recent fashionable university efforts related to Massively Open Online Course's demonstrate all too clearly. Innovations demonstrate many things symbolically to external stakeholders: you are on the cutting edge, you are the future, you are worthy of investment, you can respond to competitive pressures, you are attuned to a larger world, and so on. Ultimately, unfortunately, it is often not the work you do, but what yo...