In this episode, Sharath Jeevan OBE, Founder and CEO of STiR Education and Executive Chairman of Intrinsic Labs, speaks to Yue-Yi Hwa, RISE Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. They discuss why we need to go upside-down to focus on the people in education systems; how to change ministers’ mindsets; how to create space for teachers to innovate at the classroom level; and why education systems are “wicked hard”—that is, full of problems that are ill-defined and hard to solve.

Links

• Intrinsic Labs [Website]
• ‘Intrinsic: A Manifesto to Reignite our Inner Drive’ by Sharath Jeeven [Book]
• ‘A World Where Teachers Love Teaching’ StiR Education [Website]
• ‘Celebrating Three Well-Deserved OBEs for Services to Education’ by Kilburn, Hwa & Bullough  [RISE Blog]
• ‘Teacher Careers in Education Systems That Are Coherent for Learning: Choose and Curate Toward Commitment to Capable and Committed Teachers’ (5Cs) by Hwa & Pritchett [RISE Primer]
• ‘Systems Thinking’ [RISE Webpage]
• ‘Teacher Agency Matters More Than Ever: What Can We Practically Do About It?’ by McIntosh & Pereira [RISE Blog]
• Sharath Jeevan on LinkedIn

Guest biography

Sharath Jeevan

Sharath is one of the world's leading experts on re-igniting our inner drive (intrinsic motivation). His groundbreaking book "Intrinsic" has received glowing endorsements ranging from leading smart-thinking writers like Dan Heath and Nir Eyal, to business and education leaders to the former Prime Minister of Greece. Sharath was awarded an OBE in the 2022 Queen's New Year's Honours for founding and leading STiR Education, arguably the world's largest intrinsic motivation initiative. STIR re-ignited the motivation of 200,000 teachers, 35,000 schools and 7 million children in emerging countries. Sharath is the Executive Chairman of Intrinsic Labs, which supports organisations and leaders all around the world to solve deep motivational challenges, from governments to leading universities and high-profile corporations, from L'Oreal to the London School of Economics. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Economist, The Telegraph. Financial Times. NPR, CNN, CNBC, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India. An accomplished speaker, Sharath has delivered talks and workshops to share the ideas from "Intrinsic" with influential audiences including the World Health Organisation (WHO), Cambridge University, Daimler, Amazon and the World Economic Forum. Sharath holds degrees from Cambridge University, Oxford University and INSEAD. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his contributions to the field and was invited to serve on the high-level steering group of the Education Commission, the pre-eminent global think tank founded by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Visit intrinsic-labs.com to find out more about Sharath and his work.

Yue-Yi Hwa

Yue-Yi Hwa is a