# The power of personal relationships in the spread of the OpenCourseWare model


We saw in the cases of other East Asian countries how personal
relationships often played a key role in introducing the idea of
OpenCourseWare to new societies, and this is true even in China as far
as the limited role of China Open Resources for Education goes. This is
quite consistent with much of the literature on policy diffusion. For
example, Mintrom (1997) has studied how policy entrepreneurs can play a
role in spreading policy between states in the US, and also how
membership in professional organizations and networks can assist this
spreading of norms. He defines policy entrepreneurs as “people who seek
to initiate dynamic policy change”, which they do through attempting to
win support for ideas for policy innovations.

The strategies available to them are identifying problems, networking in
policy circles, shaping the terms of the policy debates and building
coalitions. They also face the challenge of crafting arguments
differently for different audiences, while maintaining an image of
integrity. He posits that policy entrepreneurs have the following
commonalities with business entrepreneurs: they are able to spot
problems, to take risks to promote innovative approaches to problem
solving, and they have the ability to organize others to help turn
policy ideas into government policies (Mintrom, 1997).

He also surveyed the spread of the idea of school choice among.different
states, and tested out theories about which states were closest
geographically, and which were most similar, but it turned out that what
mattered was who sent officials to the same education conferences.
Certainly it is the case that OpenCourseWare has not spread to the
countries that are closest to the US, nor to the countries that are the
most similar in structure.

In his discussion, he lists how professional networks can work as
conduits for policy ideas, and platforms for policy entrepreneurs
(Mintrom and Vergari 1998). These issue networks are institutionalized
in the form of associations, journals, newletters, list-serves and
conferences, and seem to promote what Granovetter (1973) called “weak
ties” between different groups. Successful policy entrepreneurs are able
to maintain these weak ties to different clusters of stakeholders that
are spread throughout the globe (Steiner-Khamsi 2004a; 2004b).

An interesting case of the impact of one networked individual is what
Gita Steiner-Khamsi (2006) calls the “Maris O’Rourke” effect. She was a
New Zealander instrumental in the development of outcomes-based
education (OBE) there in the 1970’s, and when she moved to the US, OBE
travelled with her. In fact, the tipping point which gave OBE a world
career happened at the same time as O’Rourke entered the World Bank.
This is a wonderful example of one individual playing a pivotal role in
disseminating a policy innovation. We could easily replace O’Rourke with
Catherine Casserly from the Hewlett Foundation, or Shigeru Miyagawa from
MIT.

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The quotes in this text is from the MA Thesis "The Chinese National Top
Level Courses Project: Using Open Educational Resources to Promote
Quality in Undergraduate Teaching" by Stian Håklev, University of
Toronto 2010.

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