Open Sky
Curriculum & Instruction CUIN 6307 · Change and Diffusion of Innovation
University of Houston CUIN 6307 · Fall 2026

University of Houston · Fall 2026

CUIN 6307Change and Diffusion of Innovation

Fourteen weeks on why sound innovations stall, and how to run an experiment that tells you the truth about yours.

Week 5 · Complicated or complex?Asynchronous · no meeting this week. Next live session is Tuesday, September 29.

Enter the course Microsoft Teams ↗

Course code CUIN6307-F26

The course site is for enrolled students. This page is open to anyone who wants to see what CUIN 6307 is and who teaches it.

About the class

Good ideas do not spread because they are good.

Every organization has an innovation everyone agreed was excellent and nobody adopted. This course is about why that keeps happening — and it is almost never because the idea was wrong.

You will start with sensemaking, learn to tell a complicated problem from a complex one, work through Rogers on diffusion and the networks that decide what counts as credible, and finish by designing a safe-to-fail experiment in your own setting: small, reversible, and genuinely able to fail.

Along the way we watch Escape Fire together, and we re-enact the Columbia Mission Management Team meeting of January 24, 2003 — not to judge NASA, but to find out when you go quiet.

How it runs

The shape of the semester.

Fourteen weeks, four modules, and one experiment you actually run.

Learning objectives

What you will be able to do.

By the end of the term, you should be able to do each of these in your own setting.

    About the instructor

    Dr. Robert Hausmann

    Educator. Facilitator. Pilot. Observer of human systems. Robert is a professor in the University of Houston EdD Professional Leadership program and an international leadership consultant. His work sits at the intersection of leadership development, organizational learning, and making sense when the stakes are high.

    He founded the Open Sky Leadership Institute. The belief that runs through this class is simple: where we gather shapes what we are open to seeing. Different places reveal different possibilities. This course is one of those gatherings.

    More about Robert ↗

    Inside the course

    Everything you need to start is behind one sign-in.

    Enrolled students get the course site: the dates, the calendar file, Week 1, and the whole syllabus.

    Every meeting date and timeThe full term, with a calendar file you add in one click.
    Week 1, ready to writeYour first assignment, written and submitted on the site.
    The syllabus, week by weekThe whole arc — and it can change, so you come back to it.
    The people in the roomCrew: who your classmates are, in their own words.
    Your profileHow the rest of us get to know you before we meet.
    Every assignment and weightWhat each piece is worth, and when it is due.
    Enter the course →

    Use your UH email (@uh.edu). First time in? Choose your own password. Your course code is CUIN6307-F26 — it is filled in for you, but write it down in case you need it.