About Principled Innovation
What Principled Innovation is, where it came from and why ASU made it a design aspiration.
What is Principled Innovation?
Innovation happens fast. How can our values keep pace?
Principled Innovation is the ability to imagine new concepts, catalyze ideas and form new solutions guided by principles that create positive change for humanity. Principled Innovation advances higher education through a plurality of worldviews in the pursuit of flourishing people, societies, and environments.
When we practice Principled Innovation, we commit to placing character and values at the center of decisions and actions.
PI over time
Principled Innovation started at Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, when educators pursued ways for character to guide teaching, learning and leadership. Since then, PI has grown into a value the whole university shares.
2017: Started at Mary Lou Fulton College
Faculty, staff, students and community partners began shaping a framework for values-driven innovation, with support from the Kern Family Foundation.
2021: Eight practices spread to more colleges
Peer-reviewed research identified eight practices across four kinds of character: moral, civic, intellectual and performance. Several colleges become early adopters of PI as interest broadens.
2023: ASU’s ninth design aspiration
ASU named Practice Principled Innovation one of its nine design aspirations, the goals that guide teaching, learning and research across the university and its impacts.
Today: Institutionalization and impact
Hundreds of faculty and staff and thousands of students practice PI, supported by long-term commitments to character-driven impact.
ASU’s ninth design aspiration
In 2023, character joined the design aspirations that guide and ground everything ASU does.
Nine design aspirations guide ASU’s growth as a New American University. Eight began at the start of President Crow’s tenure. The ninth, Practice Principled Innovation, was added in 2023.
ASU had always innovated with values in mind. Naming it now reaffirms that commitment at a time of fast technological change, polarization and eroding trust.
ASU President Michael Crow introduces Practice Principled Innovation
1
Leverage our place
ASU embraces its culture, socioeconomic and physical setting.
2
Enable student success
ASU is committed to the success of each unique student.
3
Transform society
ASU catalyzes social change by being connected to social needs.
4
Fuse intellectual disciplines
ASU creates knowledge by transcending academic disciplines.
5
Value entrepreneurship
ASU uses its knowledge and encourages innovation.
6
Be socially embedded
ASU connects with communities through mutually beneficial partnerships.
7
Conduct use-inspired research
ASU research has purpose and impact.
8
Engage globally
ASU engages with people and issues locally, nationally and internationally.
9
ASU places character and values at the center of decisions and actions.