Innovation in Education? Contradictory Terms?

In reading a post just now regarding the lackof innovation in education, there were a couple of examples provided, and this sparked a couple of my own observations from first hand experiences:
From the Article:
1. Great innovation coming out of universities is accomplished despite the university(Shawn Fanning/Napster is the example)
- I think this is a fair point, and we quite often see precisely the same thing happening in major corporations. A corporate employee who has a fantastic idea, will quite often leave the company to pursue the idea. Maybe this is for IP reasons, but it is also due to the lack of support within the organization for innovation. In many large companies, certain people on certain teams are the "designated innovators". If you are not part of that club, you are on your own.
2. Educators are focused on content, not mediums & methods
- I see this in universities as well as corporations. In each scenario, curriculum designers(sometimes overseen by compliance/audit) need to ensure that specific information is relayed to the student. Especially in corporations, the burden is to to ensure that you can document the fact that the student saw the content, and passed a quiz on the content. Sometimes as much as 80% of the educational effort is in tracking course completion, rather than ensuring the learner comprehended and can therefore deploy the knowledge
From my own Experience:
1. Education-lifers(those that studied to become teachers, and are currently teachers), tend to have a very different take on teaching methods then those current teachers who may have spent a career in Business, and then decided to become a professor.
- I will admit that almost all of my contact with educators is either at Universities or Corporations. I can generally tell almost immediately if an instructor was educated to teach, or whether the educator is teaching based on life/work experience. In my opinion, educators with a history of work experience inherently ensure that the information they are communicating is done so in such a way the learners are involved in understanding the implications for "knowledge execution". If you have lived/breathed knowledge-execution for 2 decades, you will almost certainly focus your teaching style on the end-objectives of having/using this knowledge. And in many cases, these educators will seek the best methods possible for communicating information. (don't get me started on the Pedagogy/Andragogy debate)
2. Quite often, education does not employ the same tools as business
- In my consulting practice it is not unusual to see a corporation using one set of tools to train employees, then see another set of tools given to the employees to do their job. We would not train car mechanics this way, why do we train corporate professionals this way?
3. Very often, educational software providers do not focus on what their customers(and the customers students) are asking for.
- This is my favorite so I saved it for last. I am presenting at an upcoming educational conference and the gist of what I am going to say is: we must educate the workforce of tomorrow(and today), using the tools that they will be using on the job. Now, depending on the industry, these tools will certainly be more innovative then asynchronous text messaging and powerpoint in a browser. I work with curriculum designers at Universities and corporations helping them understand what tools are available - and not just what their approved vendor has told them their product can do. There is a massive difference. I also have spoken to major LMS providers(for Universities and Corporate), and these folks have told me(and they believe what they say) that their customers only want what the vendor is currently providing. Hmmm, maybe the vendor only talks to procurement or IT? Because I get a very, very different message when I talk to professors and students. To the LMS vendor, the "customer" is the Payer. Who writes the checks? An LMS vendor must ensure that the check-writer is happy. And we should not assume that the check-writer is constantly communicating with the professor, or that the professor is always taking the pulse of student likes/dislikes. I suppose we could also argue that people won't want what they don't know exists. This however does not equal contentment. Students and Professors know what they like/dislike, regardless of whether they know about choices. Awareness of alternatives will however change how people respond to what they like/dislike(hope for improvement may spark action).