This is not to say that the aggregate value of these innovations could not be large. If the small, operational innovations prove to work for some purposes in some circumstances; if those purposes and circumstances are widespread in the system; and if means are found to diffuse these innovations rapidly across the system; the impact on system level performance can be very important. Other innovations, however, involve both a great deal of money, time, and risk to implement, and cannot be easily divided into bits that can reduce the wide uncertainty about the likely effects of the larger scale, more institutionally complex innovations. For example, at the limit, it is hard to know how one could experiment with wholly different national level systems for financing, organizing, and evaluating educational systems -- partly because the experiment would be so large, but also because there is only one site where the experiment can take place. One could, of course, take advantage of international or historical comparisons of different national educational systems. Moreover, federalist systems allow for state level variation in national systems. Finally, one could make some marginal changes in particular operational or administrative features of a national systems and observe the net effect. But the point is that these efforts are of a different kind than smaller scale experiments with the micro operational processes that can produce improved learning of different kinds, in different subjects, for different age groups.

######## Innovators, Innovations and Innovativeness

Second, as one goes through this exercise, reaching for larger, more aggregate institutions encompassing larger populations, more learning objectives, and more variety in the particular things they have to keep in motion to produce the desired results, it seems that our approach to innovation seems to change. One becomes less interested in particular operational innovations related to the intimate processes of learning, and more interested in finding, developing and encouraging innovators on one hand, and creating institutional frameworks and processes in which individuals who retain responsibility for that effort, and play central roles in producing it, can feel free to experiment. Table 2: Innovators, Innovators, and Innovativeness

Substantive Innovations in Processes that Produce Learning	Developing and Encouraging Innovators	Create Institutional Frameworks That Allow or Promote Innovativeness
Classroom Level Curriculum and Pedagogy Continuous, Personalized Measurement Classroom Discipline/Management	Innovations in Classroom Methods	Find and Support Innovative Teachers	Innovative and Adaptive Teachers
School Level Parental/Peer Engagement Teacher Selection/Motivation/Evaluation School Leadership, Management, Governance	Innovations in School Level Strategy and Leadership	Find and Support School Leaders Who are Willing to Experiment	Creating Schools that Can Learn
National Level Teacher Development Systems Financing/Monitoring Systems Curriculum Requirements and Certifications Research, Development and Evaluation	Innovations in National Systems	Find and Support Political Officials Willing to Change Education Policy	Creating a National System that Can Learn