An innovation zone is an organizational space in a local or state public education system where entrepreneurs are afforded the independence, authority, and incentive necessary to pursue innovation free from undue interference.
An innovation zone may be established by a state legislature, which has the ability to create the capacity and conditions for innovation inside the public system.
Or an innovation zone may be established at the level of a city, as more and more districts are creating new and different schools alongside the existing.
In Disrupting Class Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen argues that policy makers 
must create separate spaces where fundamentally-different innovations in schooling may occur. Even organizations with the best of intentions, Christensen argues, often cannot fundamentally reform themselves inside established operations. The organization's culture, its business model, and its profit formula all work against it.
Understanding this dynamic, education leaders and policy makers are choosing to run a split-screen strategy at reform. While continuing to work to improve the existing factory-style schools, they are developing robust R&D efforts inside innovation zones designed specifically for trying new things.
*Image: Separate space; TwoCircles, San Francisco
