The reason there is not as much innovation in education is fairly simple:
The people doing the innovating rarely feel the pain points, and the people doing the decision-making rarely feel the pain points.
To make this more concrete, those who are in decision-making positions are administrators (who are concerned with teaching on a macro level and on an "are all the boxes in this curriculum guide getting checked off?"), school board members (who are rarely in classrooms), and legislators (who only go into classrooms when it's politically expedient).
Any type of "innovation" comes down from on high based on perceived problems rather than actual problems.
In the meantime, you've got lots of teachers in the trenches, some of whom are luddites, but most of whom are willing to try something new, particularly if it makes their job easier or more effective.
I got in trouble (when I was teaching) for using an online gradebook rather than a paper gradebook because my principal had less control over it. When using technology, the mantra was "Why don't you just have them make a powerpoint?"
If you want real innovation in educational technology, it'll have to either come from the teachers, or it'll have to come from people who work closely with teachers. From there, you'll have to sell it to administrators (in order to even begin to make money), while teachers (at least in my experience) generally do a pretty good job of evangelizing improvements to those who are still willing to improve (which, I think, is more than it sometimes seems, but fewer than perhaps there should be).
TL;DR: there's no innovation because current products either create more pain-points than they solve, or they don't solve any relevant pain points that the people using them actually have.
The people doing the innovating rarely feel the pain points, and the people doing the decision-making rarely feel the pain points.
To make this more concrete, those who are in decision-making positions are administrators (who are concerned with teaching on a macro level and on an "are all the boxes in this curriculum guide getting checked off?"), school board members (who are rarely in classrooms), and legislators (who only go into classrooms when it's politically expedient).
Any type of "innovation" comes down from on high based on perceived problems rather than actual problems.
In the meantime, you've got lots of teachers in the trenches, some of whom are luddites, but most of whom are willing to try something new, particularly if it makes their job easier or more effective.
I got in trouble (when I was teaching) for using an online gradebook rather than a paper gradebook because my principal had less control over it. When using technology, the mantra was "Why don't you just have them make a powerpoint?"
If you want real innovation in educational technology, it'll have to either come from the teachers, or it'll have to come from people who work closely with teachers. From there, you'll have to sell it to administrators (in order to even begin to make money), while teachers (at least in my experience) generally do a pretty good job of evangelizing improvements to those who are still willing to improve (which, I think, is more than it sometimes seems, but fewer than perhaps there should be).
TL;DR: there's no innovation because current products either create more pain-points than they solve, or they don't solve any relevant pain points that the people using them actually have.