This paper discusses the nature of higher education business models and how innovation can (or cannot) occur within those models. It explores the stories of educational institutions as they have tried to launch innovative practices, profiling Bellevue University (Nebraska) and Tiffin University (Ohio), schools that tried to build innovative online programs only to find themselves having run afoul of their accreditor. It also explores the story of Southern New Hampshire University, which successfully built a program, College for America, that is quite similar in certain respects to what Bellevue and Tiffin attempted. The paper discusses the experience of General Assembly, a bootcamp which is not accredited and does not have access to Title IV funding. Together these stories illustrate that accreditation is not necessarily at odds with innovation. Accreditors can block innovation, but they can also facilitate it. Institutions, however, do not always know what their accreditor will allow them to do when they seek to innovate--or what resources they may have to expend to convince an accreditor that an innovation should be permissible. [This paper was first published as a chapter in "Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education," Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.]