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Комплементарность как принцип развития партнерств в инновационной образовательной системе
The article discusses the formats of interaction between various participants involved in innovative and project activities in the educational sphere. We present the interpretation, adoption and adaptation of the concept of innovative ecosystem complementarity into the educational context. The article puts a strong emphasis on specific deficits and gaps that educational innovators face in their projects, and on emerging opportunities to overcome these gaps through the complementarity of resources and competencies of different participants in the innovation process. The empirical study is based on data obtained from semi-structured interviews with representatives of the regional educational system, teachers and administrators in schools, regional authorities in the educational sphere, individual innovators (authors of commercial and non-commercial educational initiatives). The interviews covered the following topics: the history of an educational project launch; platforms for financial, expert, and information support; partnerships, mutual exchange and dissemination of innovative ideas in the educational community. This frame allowed us to explore comprehensively the interdependence of barriers and drivers of an educational project, on the one hand, and support and collaboration strategies, on the other. As a result of two-stage thematic coding, we structured the main types of resource and organizational barriers in the innovation sphere, and identified the strong impact of personnel shortages and positioning deficits on the further growth and strengthening of educational initiatives in the community. To address these shortcomings, innovators get engaged in partnerships and collaborative alliances that might allow for sharing and concentration of resources, co-branding and co-joint launch of complex projects. Another result is the detailed structure of formats of institutional partnerships and horizontal interactions in educational projects. Thus, we identified leadership and associative forms of partnerships, regular (joint project activities and expert support) and event formats of interactions. In the discussion part, the article introduces the model of complementarity in education and reveals the dual character of horizontal educational partnerships. They give a significant impetus to innovative projects development and simultaneously cause institutional tensions in the organizational and managerial structure. The article provides the foundation for future studies on the overall effects of partnerships and specialised complementarities on the heterogeneity, diversity and quality of educational initiatives, and on joint development of human capital in education.