Can Innovation Be Taught? Evidence from a School-Based RCT in India

Innovation fuels long-run economic growth, yet education systems in developing countries often overlook the skills required for innovation. This paper provides the first experimental evidence that students can learn core innovation-related skills. I conduct a large-scale clustered randomized controlled trial with 4,800 eighth-grade students in India, comparing a two-year school-based innovation training program to a control group with access to self-directed project opportunities. Because existing measures of innovation are scarce and rarely validated in low-income school settings, I develop a novel, multi-method toolkit that includes a strategic exploration task, expert-rated idea quality assessments, and a live funding competition. Treated students significantly outperformed controls across all three domains (0.10–0.24 SD) and secured 24 percentage points more external funding. The program also improved fluid intelligence and problem-solving, though these remained distinct from innovation outcomes. Heterogeneity analyses show complementary gains in innovation and math for students with above-median baseline scores (0.16–0.20 SD), and gains in higher-order skills but math declines (–0.14 SD) for those below the median. These patterns suggest that lower-performing students reallocated effort away from abstract math toward more applied, hands-on tasks where they experienced greater success. The results offer a proof of concept: innovation skills are malleable, and marginalized students can develop them—reframing assumptions about when and where valuable ideas can emerge.