sparking and leading innovation

Sparking and Leading Innovation

Women’s Leadership InstituteDecember 5-8, 2010Kathryn J. Deiss

ACRL Content Strategistkdeiss@ala.org

Photo by Tom Oliver

“Different is not always better but better is always different.”

Rick LuceEmory University

Photo by kelsmith1992

Who is innovative?

Creative InventionsLightning Rounds - 60

seconds

1.Create an invention using your card and someone else’s

2. Write it down on back of card

3. Find another person and repeat

4. Find another person and repeat

“Innovation is the embodiment, combination, and/or synthesis of knowledge in novel, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.”

Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap

The Adjacent Possible :a concept describing the power of combinatory connections/collisions

Coined by scientist Stuart Kaufmann and cited in Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

More stuff on the table!

Photo by Lucy Lou

Innovations are those things that change the way we can do what we want to do

Innovation is disruptive

Innovation is both revolutionary and evolutionary

Society decides what is innovative

Cornelis Drebbel and £20,000 (1624)

Societal readiness Patterns of behavior Political climate Building the message

Operate “just beyond the possible.”

Source: Paul C. Light “Sustaining Innovation”Photo by Bee Skutch

Barriers to innovation Organizational age

Individual & group skills lacking

Desire for perfection

Risk aversion

Natural tensions & dichotomies Photo by remu

z

Photo by moqub

Sometimes you have to bust something up to achieve a breakthrough!

Prototyping: a new skill

Prototyping Observation of people & situations

Trials and tests

Three dimensional aspect

Inventive

Feedback loops

“Quick prototyping is about acting before you have got the answers…

Good prototypes don’t just communicate, they persuade.”

Tom Kelley, IDEO

What’s in a name? the GGNRA’s transformation by prototype

Design by Michael Schwab

From Golden Gate National Recreation AreatoGolden Gate National Parks

Photo by yepperdoodle

Use the unexpected to your advantage

Johnny Lee Chung:a case of unintended consequenceshttp://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

Photo by fixpert!

Think of an innovation in your department or institution. How could you create a prototype of some kind (physical, process, etc.) for this innovation?

As a group share projects and do a quick idea sort on one of these situations(10 mins)

Photo by Loensis

Innovation Incubators

Innovation incubators Places - physical & virtual

Skills - play, ideating, prototyping

Practices - processes and tools

Technologies - emerging tools for delivering and testing services

Planning an Innovation Incubator

Use the planning handout to think through setting up an innovation incubator - let your imagination play!Discuss your planning thoughts

with two other people in the room

Some Final Thoughts

We need to seek intersections

We need to engage in trial and error and prototyping

We need to adopt multiple perspectives

We need to face into the outside world

“The most successful people are those who are willing to give up their most successful strategies….”

Richard Foster

Thank you!

Keep in touch!kdeiss@ala.org