Nowadays, the emergence of digital technologies has begun to radically reshape the institutional design of the educational sphere. At the same time, we witness a series of new demands for the educational sphere that arise due to labour market transformation, the demand for inclusiveness and bridging socio-economic gaps. As a result, the educational system still has additional potential for transformation.

We suppose that individual innovative projects or grassroots innovations can become an important development driver in the educational sphere under the conditions of limited resources and global challenges. Simultaneously, innovators in education often find themselves in a situation of resource shortage and high institutional pressure. They also tackle problems related to the lack of peer-to-peer support, as well as a lack of trust between different levels of management in the educational system (Niedlich et al, 2021). Another conjoint problem is the high degree of centralisation of the innovation policy in education [Wu, & Lin, 2020]. Global experience shows that exclusively unidirectional top-down transfer of initiatives through formal channels do not use the full potential of transformation innate to the educational system (Van den Boom-Muilenburg et al., 2022).

We seek to combine some of the issues discussed above in order to create the whole picture of how  the landscape of education evolves. To discuss these issues we build upon the concept of grassroots innovations, and we combine it with the concept of distributed leadership to incorporate the aspect of co-creation by considering transformational potential in education. This theoretical lens presents a complex approach to explore when we have to link innovative push, institutional redesign, and urgent society demands in education to provide interactions between innovators and different stakeholders in the educational sphere.

First, we consider grassroots innovations as the initiatives embedded in the local context, they are closely linked to social initiatives. Another feature of grassroots innovation is that they often have a clear social impact and are launched as a response to social injustice and environmental problems (Raj, et al., 2022). A number of authors compare grassroots innovation with inclusive innovation - aimed at ensuring equal access to benefits for vulnerable categories (Tan, & Zuckermann, 2021). Thus, the potential of grassroots innovation relates to the speed and flexibility of responses to educational problems that public institutions cannot afford.

Second, we associate distributed leadership with the number of stakeholders’ viewpoints involved in the decision making process (Denis, et al. 2012) and with a plural leadership view on change (Canterino, et al., 2020). According to previous research, distributed leadership in education develop the professional capital and instructional capacity of teachers (Harris, & DeFlaminis, 2016), impact on teachers’ use of innovative practices (O'Shea, 2021), increase motivation for change, and contribute to more innovative solutions to school challenges (Snoek et al., 2019).

Consequently, public authorities in education need to behave less like traditional public bureaucracies and more like innovation animateurs, boosting new connections. To increase transformational potential, we should support collaboration and provide incentives for experimentation, encourage teachers, innovators and other stakeholders to become involved in educational change and to seize opportunities for diversification.

The aim of this study is to reveal how distributed leadership and community engagement provide necessary resources and expertise support for grassroots initiatives. We pose the following research questions:

1. To what extent may grassroots innovations be considered as a part of transformational potential within the educational system?

2. Which formats of distributed leadership may support grassroots dynamism, fill the gaps, remove imbalances, and facilitate connections between different stakeholders in the educational space?

3. What are the main impacts of community engagement on the sustainability, diffusion, and replication of grassroots innovations?

The empirical study is based on data obtained from the semi-structured interviews. Since the research was designed to study cooperative ties among innovators, the guides for the interviews covered the following topics. The first section contained items to elicit respondents' demographic information, including their professional status in the educational system, as well as the basic information about their innovative project in education. The second section contained items to reveal their motives and barriers for creating an educational project. The third section contained items to describe the exchange and dissemination of innovative ideas in the educational community, the stable and temporary partnerships, and the channels that innovators use to obtain resources, information and expertise. In total, we established 4 different guides for different types of respondents. The research setting chosen for the study consisted of teachers and administrators in schools, regional authorities in the educational sphere, individual innovators, and representatives of museums that carry out educational activities. There has been much discussion about how to measure innovativeness and how to classify projects as innovative. Conventional measures of a firm's innovative activity are not relevant for educational organisations, especially for those within the formal system. The formal status of federal or regional innovative platforms seems to be an evident criterion, but this approach would exclude a lot of grassroots innovations and informal initiatives. Finally, we define educational innovation as a new local practice or approach in the educational process (new educational product, methodological process or approach to interact with the community of learners). Thus, we considered all organisations and individuals which implemented these new practices in the fields of general and extra-curricular education. The research used a non-random sample. To improve the completeness and relevance of the data, we followed 4 principles: we included representatives from both formal and non-formal education; the geography of the study covered towns of different types and sizes within the same region; at least 2 organisations participated in the interview process in each town; at least 2 respondents participated in the interview process in each organisation. The data were collected in 3 russian regions during the field expedition. We conducted 150 interviews with specialists from 65 organisations. The collected data were processed using two-stage thematic coding. First, we identified descriptive codes and categorised them into five sub-themes. Then, we built second-level codes to describe the full range of practices concerning survival, strengthening and dissemination of educational initiatives.

We present the following three main results of our study. First, we explored distributed leadership across and between organisations and even levels of education. We present the differences between internal and external ties. Internal ties with partners within the educational system rely upon a joint commitment to similar problems and projects, mutual trust and understanding because of common values and experience. These ties strengthen educational initiatives in an exploitative way through in-depth methodological and contextual elaboration of existing educational products. At the same time, external ties provoke the emergence of new educational formats at the intersection of culture, technology, social and entrepreneurial spheres. All of this allows them to find new digital solutions for the educational process, build learning algorithms with the use of business frames, and implement elements of social design in educational activities. Thus, heterogeneity and cross-disciplinarity of knowledge, skills, and experience reinforce the overall level of the quality, diversity and creativity of educational initiatives. Second, we explored existing formats and types of collaboration within the educational sphere. Team work involves new participants in joint projects on the basis of common interests, independently of institutional structures. Formal and informal professional associations reinforce intra-community trust and motivate young teachers. Personal connections on different platforms. The authors of the projects provide assistance for newcomers in submitting a grant application, preparing for competitions, etc. Event layer. This format provides an extensive and sporadic exchange of experience through events such as festivals, exhibitions, meetings after professional championships etc. Third, we identified the role played by non-governmental organisations in these partnerships. They create communities to disseminate educational initiatives with a social impact. Such organisations interact with schools, universities, corporations, media and other influencers, forming an extensive network of leaders and ambassadors of change.

Canterino, F., Cirella, S., Piccoli, B., & Shani, A. B. R. (2020). Leadership and change mobilization: The mediating role of distributed leadership. Journal of Business Research, 108, 42-51. Denis, J. L., Langley, A., & Sergi, V. (2012). Leadership in the plural. Academy of Management Annals, 6(1), 211-283. Harris, A., & DeFlaminis, J. (2016). Distributed leadership in practice: Evidence, misconceptions and possibilities. Management in education, 30(4), 141-146. Niedlich, S., Kallfaß, A., Pohle, S., & Bormann, I. (2021). A comprehensive view of trust in education: Conclusions from a systematic literature review. Review of Education, 9(1), 124-158. O'Shea, C. (2021). Distributed leadership and innovative teaching practices. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 2, 100088. Raj, G., Feola, G., Hajer, M., & Runhaar, H. (2022). Power and empowerment of grassroots innovations for sustainability transitions: A review. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 43, 375-392. Snoek, M., Hulsbos, F., & Andersen, I. (2019). Teacher leadership: hoe kan het leiderschap van leraren in scholen versterkt worden?. Tan, W. L., Gangopadhyay, P., & Hauptman, O. (2021). Introduction to the special issue on “Grassroots and inclusive innovations: Conceptualizing synergies and complementarities”. Van den Boom-Muilenburg, S. N., Poortman, C. L., Daly, A. J., Schildkamp, K., De Vries, S., Rodway, J., & Van Veen, K. (2022). Key actors leading knowledge brokerage for sustainable school improvement with PLCs: Who brokers what?. Teaching and teacher education, 110, 103577. Wu, S., & Lin, C. Y. Y. (2020). Innovation and entrepreneurship in an educational ecosystem: Cases from Taiwan. Springer Nature.