11-11-2025 –, Spinoza foyer
How do you build a sustainable innovation culture at your institution? At KU Leuven, we do this through the ‘Learning Lab network’, plus a phased approach to innovation projects: seed, scale-up, implementation. Although we have already gained valuable experience in this area, for example in the dissemination of project results, important questions remain. How do you draw up a strategic innovation agenda? What criteria do you use to select projects? And how can future thinking guide educational innovation?
In this interactive birds of a feather session, we would like to discuss these questions with you. You will learn how we approach this and we invite you to discuss your own experiences, challenges and ideas. Topics such as project selection, strategy formation and embedding innovation in policy will be discussed.
A sustainable culture of innovation in education means that educational innovation does not arise from individual initiatives only, but becomes embedded in the broader educational practices and structures of a university or college.
At KU Leuven, we are building such a culture of innovation through the Learning Lab network, a platform that connects teachers, support staff and policymakers around educational approaches and innovation. At the heart of this is a maturity model that supports innovation projects in three constructive phases: seed, scale-up and implementation. Each type of project receives resources, guidance and a place in the broader network. We have now gained experience with projects in all phases and can see how this approach contributes to strengthening innovation within the institution.
Nevertheless, we still have important questions to answer. How do you use the available resources and energy most strategically? How do you determine which themes should be given priority? And how do you ensure that, when a call for projects is issued, you know what is going on and where the greatest needs or opportunities lie? What criteria do you use to select projects?
A key challenge is to draw up an ‘innovation agenda’: a guiding framework that helps to interpret trends and signals, make choices and position projects. We are curious to know how your institution deals with this. How do you bring bottom-up ideas and top-down strategy together? What role can future thinking play in shaping such an agenda? And how do you install future exploration as a methodology within your institution?
In this birds of a feather session, we will discuss this with you. We will briefly share our approach and experiences, and invite you to share your own practices, questions and insights.
At the end of the session, you will have:
- insight into how other institutions deal with innovation policy and practice;
- inspiration for drawing up an innovation agenda;
- initial ideas on how future thinking can be structurally embedded.
This session is aimed at policymakers, innovation managers, project coordinators, educational support staff and anyone involved in stimulating and guiding educational innovation within higher education institutions. The session offers space for exchange, reflection and inspiration. Together, we want to learn how we can not only stimulate innovation, but also embed it sustainably in our educational approach.
