Virginia Tech’s Center for Innovation in Learning (CIL) seeks to stimulate, support, and assess innovative approaches to augmenting the human intellect by means of information and communication technologies. CIL programs focus on what John Seely Brown and others have called the “edge” of traditional practices and approaches. Such “edge” endeavors, and those who pursue them, share some important characteristics:



*Their work is nimble and has the potential to scale.
*Their work is differentiated from core practices.
*Their work is intensely aspirational, motivated by an unusually strong sense of mission and purpose.

​

Those who work at the edge “are truly out to ‘change the world’ and will settle for nothing less” (Brown et al., “Three Ways to Distinguish an Edge from a Fringe,” Harvard Business Review, March 10, 2010. Online: http://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2010/03/three-ways-to-distinguish-an-e.html).

​
This third characteristic is the most important of all. Only this kind of intensity, born of a desire to lead within a “symbolic” frame (Bolman & Deal, 1997), can bring about cultural transformation and the “leapfrog” innovations that are truly breathtaking.