Barriers to Innovation in Educational Organizations

Innovation represents the most important factor of success in the intense competition between organisations, being advantaged only those organisations that have won new competitive advantages. To answer the challenges of the education system, it is necessary to introduce some concepts regarding the innovation on the level of the individual, the institution and the society. In order to identify the barriers to innovation from VET, a set of questionnaires was handed over to be filled in by 170 people (directors, inspectors, teachers), from different counties of Romania. The questions concerned: the identification of obstacles, ways of surpassing the obstacles, possible legislative measures to increase the freedom of making entrepreneurship decisions, constraints in the innovation process, major policies meant to facilitate innovation, future challenges in innovation. In this way, we have been able to identify potential barriers, but also remedy mechanisms, on three levels (individual, institutional, societal). In the end, a matrix of the main barriers and mechanisms came out from totaling the responses. To adapt to rapid changes, school organizations have to be able to predict the new trends or even determine them.