Category Archives: Creativity & Innovation

Creativity & Innovation

LAMSTAIH and Other Creativity Insights from Play

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Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by creative coach Tim Leonard of the Richmond-based creativity consultancy firm, Play. Leonard described the models and approaches employed by Play to help clients reach their creative potential. His words were inspiring. He reaffirmed my belief that any employee or organization can capitalize on its innate ability to be creative. In addition, he offered concrete approaches to harnessing creativity – techniques that librarians can also learn and apply to create better user experiences. Here are the highlights of the talk and my commentary:

LAMSTAIH

Play operates from a central tenet: LAMSTAIH (pronounced Lam-Stye), which stands for Look at More Stuff. Think about It Harder. These seemingly obvious statements are deceptively simple. Look at More Stuff, according to Play, “is the process of designing and experiencing an inspiration inventory to make observations and gain insights.” The mere act of looking, however, is more difficult than it may sound. Most of us, Leonard asserted, are trapped in what he calls a “to-do list mentality” that derails creative thinking. In this mindset, we’re focused on outcomes and on checking projects off of our lists. What’s more conducive to creativity is to focus on process and to actively observe the world around us for inspiration. (Leonard, not surprisingly, argued that a desk is a horrible place for doing this observational work). For better creative thinking, Leonard recommended stepping out from what’s familiar into new and strange environments to observe. These observations, in conjunction with particular methodologies that will be discussed later, can lead to insights that drive innovations. In essence, Leonard suggested pointing that “to-do list mentality” toward focused observation. In one example, Leonard pointed to Loggerhead Tools’ award-winning Bionic Wrench design, which was inspired by the shutter of a camera’s lens.

The Think About it Harder piece of LAMSTAIH “is the process in which specific tools and methodologies are applied to transform observations and insights into concrete ideas & concepts.” Though I don’t pretend to grasp the process fully at this point in time, it involves ditching preconceived notions of your objective, breaking the objective down into its core elements, and then focusing your observations on those core pieces. Play recommends first making “safe” observations on things closely related to those core pieces, and then widening the search to things that are only tangentially related so as to side-step your brain’s preconceived notions in order to make truly innovative discoveries.

The 5 M’s

Leonard discussed another model called the 5 M Model of Systemic Innovation. This model is used to understand innovation at the organizational level. The M’s in question are Mood, Mindset, Mechanisms, Measurement, and Momentum. Leonard discussed the first 3 M’s in detail.

Mood

Mood is fairly self-explanatory. It’s the climate for innovation and the mindspace where people work.

Mindset

Leonard referred to Mindset as the intellectual foundation of creativity. It’s the personal traits and behaviors exhibited by members of the organization. There are 4 aspects of Mindset that people can control to foster creativity:

1. Change Perspective: Examine a problem from every angle and point of view. Leonard noted that most companies are very bad at this because the dominant point-of-view is established by the organizational leaders.

2. Confusion Tolerance: Confusion tolerance demands that organizations suspend the need to solve a problem in favor of generating a breadth of possible solutions.

3. Skinned Knees: A.K.A Taking Risks. Leonard mentioned that oftentimes that, for the sake of starting a conversation, people need to offer up ideas that may not be well-received. However, by taking a risk and throwing out an idea, people have something to react to to move beyond stagnant thinking.

4. Passion: Leonard emphasized the importance of bringing your personal passion to work with you. He said that there is often a discrepency between the “work self” and “real self” and that by bringing the two closer together, innovations are more likely to occur.

Mechanisms

Mechanisms are the tools and processes of innovation, or “the how.” One mechanism Leonard mentioned was something called “worst idea.” If no one can think of a good idea, Leonard recommends that everyone offer up their worst idea. This technique gets people thinking and often leads to the best ideas. To demonstrate this, Leonard mentioned a project he worked on in which is team was charged with the monumental task of promoting wool clothing with a fresh take. The worse idea offered involved letting a herd of sheep loose in Manhattan. The idea that was actually executed was one in which models walked sheep around Manhattan.

At the end of his talk, I was not only inspired but I had generated countless questions about Play’s approaches and their potential application to libraries. Specifically, I began to more fully understand that creativity is the end result of a lot of hard work. One must consciously seek out unique experiences and insights while restraining one’s natural inclination to jump to conclusions. I then began thinking about current marketplace trends toward consumer empowerment and businesses’ desire to capitalize on innovations generated by customers. Is this deference toward customers as a source of innovation warranted? I asked Leonard his thoughts on this and mentioned how Apple purposefully doesn’t use focus groups as a source of ideas. He responded that Apple needs to be a few steps ahead of its customers to be competitive and that customers likely wouldn’t be able to articulate a vision like what Apple designers devise. I believe the same holds true in the library world. We can’t wait for great ideas to spontaneously sprout up from patrons or competitors. It’s a professional imperative that we librarians learn how to seek out and strategically develop innovative ideas. Creativity requires focused effort, not good luck. If we are to appeal to patrons’ imaginations and create real value for them, we must adopt an inquisitive and experimental attitude in which the world outside of our library walls is our laboratory. In fact, if Play’s philosophy holds true, our institutions are destined to stagnate or worse, become completely anachronistic, if we don’t look broadly for insights. We can and should invite our patrons in on this journey, but they too need the tools, guidance, opportunity, and incentives to discover new ideas. It’s our job to lead the way and we can’t delegate that responsibility, as doing so would be a disservice to our patrons and our communities. We should, however, be encouraged to know that creativity is something each and every one of us can learn to practice and apply.

To learn more about creativity from Play’s point-of-view, read their Red Papers, many of which I’ve linked to throughout this piece.

Articles, Creativity & Innovation, Uncategorized

Finding Your Innovation Orientation

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Understanding creativity and innovation is one area of concern for librarians, but so too is figuring out how to foster an environment conducive to producing innovations. The latter issue is the subject of an article entitled, Developing an Innovation Orientation in Financial Services Organisations by Dr. Christopher Brooke Dobni. This paper offers an innovation model for financial services firms, and one that I suspect can be applied successfully to libraries with some modifications given the relatively close relationship between the two areas of professional service.

According to Dobni, innovation is important because it allows companies to create substantive customer value within a highly competitive environment. In fact, he asserts that innovative organizations wield innovation to take advantage of opportunities when they arise and outpace their competitors in the process. Dobni writes that innovative organizations share 4 common characteristics:

  1. Employees recognize that innovation is a group effort
  2. The organizational cultures are marked by creativity, excitement, and desire to succeed.
  3. Competition drives companies to learn and do more.
  4. Organizations purposely weave innovation into their daily operations.

If you don’t recognize these characteristics in your own library, you’re not alone. Dobni cites research that finds that many organizations want to be innovative, but very few report that they have achieved that status.

Dobni’s innovation model has 3 main components: 1. Context – What management does to support innovation; 2. Culture – Employees’ collective thoughts and actions; and 3. Execution – Making innovation happen. Each component has sub-parts, but for simplicity’s sake, I will outline the major points from each category.

Context

Organizations must be willing and able to make substantial, fundamental changes to their cultures and operations. Without a commitment to do so from the top down, innovation has little chance of taking root. In fact, Dobni states the organizations may have to change up to half of their current processes to promote innovation. Furthermore, organizations have to be able to grab hold of emergent opportunities and be on the lookout for those opportunities at all times. Doing so is extremely difficult to achieve since a company is, in effect, allocating resources for actions that have yet to be defined, which entails a great deal of risk. Finally, organizations must be learning organizations. Organizations must provide educational opportunities, including education about innovation, for employees and also learn from employees.

Culture

In order to achieve and maintain an innovative organization, all employees must participate, not just a few “creative-types.” Also, employees who share common goals should generate and share useful information with one another, such as information about competitors and customers. Lastly, employees should be prompted to seek opportunities by exploring previously un-explored areas. Dobni refers to this criteria as “cluster enactment,” whereby employees study relevant business clusters (emerging technology, the industry, competitors, etc.) and are encouraged to go beyond those clusters or into new clusters.

Execution

This is where the rubber meets the road and where strategy is applied. One important element of execution is empowerment. Employees should feel empowered to make independent choices with the confidence that they have the capabilities to do so. Second, is risk-taking. As Dobni states, “[B]eing innovative involves a heightened risk propensity and it is inevitable that there will be false starts and failed attempts. The very essence of innovation is to get employees to think differently, to become adventurous, and to take managed risks…Tradition, however, is the crutch holding many organisations back” (175-176). Importantly, employees must be permitted to learn from failed attempts. Also important, successful, innovative organizations are those that can continually realign themselves with the competitive environment.

Granted, Dobni’s research pertains to an industry outside of our own, but I certainly detected commonalities between the two and believe it’s not unreasonable to adopt some of these ideas. What’s perhaps most striking to me in this article is the relationship between innovation and competition. In this piece, competition is something to be embraced to advance one’s own organization. We cannot always predict how the competitive environment will shape up, however, and so it is imperative that libraries allow themselves some latitude in terms for their short- and long-term plans. Perhaps more important than reaching Goal X is creating a culture that is responsive to the environment it’s part of and has the tools to respond appropriately in order to create real value for patrons. Librarians, as I see it, should make it a point to seek out competition even before it finds us, which will help make us sharper and more relevant to our user communities.

Please share your thoughts on this piece if you have an opportunity to read it.

Creativity & Innovation, Uncategorized

Learn From The TED Conference

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Perhaps you saw some of the articles that appeared in the New York Times last week about the TED Conference. TED is now considered one of the world’s premier conferences for bringing together experts, pundits, and celebreties from three industries: Technology; Entertainment; and Design. TED is mostly about who is there and who is presenting. The latter is perhaps the primary reason for librarians to check out TED. If you want to see great presentations and learn from them, you must be exploring TED. Some TED facts:

   * Only 1,000 people can attend.
   * The presentation auditorium only holds 500 people. Everyone else watches in another room
   * A ticket costs $6,000 (there is already a waiting list for 2008).
   * Speakers are not paid (they do get a free ticket)

I’m not sure that many talks from the latest TED are available online yet. My suggestion is to check the Ted Talks site. There is an archive of talks there, and new ones are posted all the time. In the past I have found a number of good talks that relate to design issues (hence the “D” in TED). If I come across any particularly good ones I’ll be sure to share them here.

 

Books, Creativity & Innovation

Squeezing the Most from Creativity

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Authors Pat Fallon and Fred Senn describe how they put creativity to the test in their book, Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage. Fallon, CEO and Chairman of advertising agency Fallon Worldwide, and his partner Senn describe how they use creativity to gain a secure competitive advantage. In fact, they argue that

“Imagination is the last legal means of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.”

Fallon Worldwide is the agency responsible for memorable campaigns such as Citi’s “Live Richly,” BMW Internet films, and Lee Jean’s “Buddy Lee” spots. You can see a collection of their work here . The authors tell the stories of how these memorable ads came to be and summarize the book with a chapter called “Lessons Learned,” which I highly recommend taking a look at. (You may also want to see a book review in Business Week).

What’s significant from a librarian perspective is that the authors don’t rely on huge sums of money to carry out these campaigns. Rather, they employ something called “creative leverage” to get the job done. As they define it, creative leverage is the ongoing process of making creativity accountable for eliciting changes in consumer behavior. In other words, they make creativity work and achieve concrete results.

What’s also notable is that there is no one technique for unleashing creativity. Sometimes, creative leverage is found through humor, other times it’s found through artistry, rigorous market research, or innovative uses of online media. There are, however, some themes that run throughout that give us insights into how to seize our creative potential. Here are some of the points about creativity that struck me:

Hit the pavement. The advertising teams never did their work from the sidelines. They conducted focus groups and talked to people on the front lines. In the case of the Holiday Inn Express campaign, planners hitched rides with business travelers and recorded their accounts of their family and work lives. Creativity, it seems, can’t be found from a desk. It’s necessary to see the problem from many different angles and points-of-view. Keen listening skills also come into play here.

Define the problem. The first of the authors’ 7 principles of creative leverage states, “Always Start from Scratch.” In the book, they illustrate this point from their work with Purina Dog Chow. The product had been commoditized and so it was undifferentiated from its competitors. The planning team rallied their dog-owning friends to find out what motivates people to buy dog food. The team found that customers mistakenly believed that changing their pup’s food frequently offered them desired variety. In reality, a steady diet is easier on dogs’ digestive tracts, and so the team focused its message on re-educating consumers. I personally have also found that identifying the correct problem is one of the most challenging tasks in designing services because it’s easy to over-rely on past experience and assumptions rather than approach an issue with a fresh take.

Don’t underestimate emotions. People are rational beings, to a point. At one time or another, emotions will exert influence on thought processes. As we apply creativity to design work, it’s important to recognize that our services should appeal to people on both a rationale and emotional level. In Juicing the Orange, the authors describe their work with United Airlines and their “It’s Time to Fly” campaign. Their breakthrough was recognizing that target customers were brand-conscious and wanted to display their success through consumption choices. In other words, these travelers considered more than just the costs and flight times when buying their tickets. Being creative involves tapping into emotions, as well as intellect.

Finally, welcome risk. Creativity, as I previously defined it, is the ability to create something. Making something out of nothing entails making guesses about the present and future. When those guesses are well-received, we achieve some measure of success. In fact, the authors argue that we achieve a competitive advantage. When attempts fall flat, organizations must maintain a creativity-friendly environment to encourage further risk-taking that may lead to the next great innovation.

As you can see, there are a number of pointers that can enhance an individual’s creativity, but you may be wondering how we can encourage creativity at an organizational level. In an upcoming post, I’ll discuss research conducted in the financial services industry that produced a model for establishing creative and innovative organizations.

Creativity & Innovation

The Innovation Table & Reconfiguring Staff

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I’ve been visiting labs around campus to better understand the work they do and to find opportunities for the Library to support them. My ulterior motive is to see how they function—workflow, cooperation, collaboration, output, organization, etc.

One lab that I found inspiring is Electronic Learning Communities. This is a small group of five PhD candidates all working on research focused on the theme of digital learning communities. What I found intriguing is something I call The Innovation Table located in the center of the room. When they are at their desks, they are off in their own world with headphones on. Yet if they sit down at this central table it is a nonverbal invitation to collaborate. One of the students told me that when she hits a roadblock or just wants to bounce ideas around, she moves her work to the table and that others soon follow. I really like this concept of a place to go to get inspiration and to talk things out.

These social dynamics got me thinking about how we might apply this to libraries. How might we reconfigure workspace in order to foster innovative thinking? Most libraries (sweeping assumption here) group staff together by department. There is a logical benefit of placing people together who do similar work. But what if we shook that up a bit? I can imagine a configuration in which I worked in a shared space with our web application programmer, our Electronic Resources Coordinator, and our Commons Coordinator. Each of us is focused on solving different problems and yet we rarely interact together. This “lab” style arrangement could produce great motivation and would provide the ability to bounce ideas around. This grouping would also enable us to see the big picture and to thread collections, public services, and systems together. Ultimately, we could build upon each other’s experiences and perceptions and develop new ideas which would have been impossible (or unlikely) when we were surrounded by liked-minded colleagues.

I’m curious, has anyone experimented with this type of arrangement? It’s one thing to be on a committee or taskforce together, but to share space is a whole new endeavor. I think it would create more of an upstart or venture capitalist vibe, which could be cool. The McDonaldization article suggests Skunk Works although I’m not sure libraries are quite ready for that yet. So, how might we reconfigure staff in order to stimulate ideas and improve services? That’s what’s on my mind these days.

Creativity & Innovation

Creativity and Innovation: Two Sides of the Same Coin

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The words creativity and innovation are often expressed as if they’re one word, and subsequently, their individual meanings tend to blur. Creativity and innovation are in fact two distinct concepts that rely on one another. The Oxford English Dictionary defines creativity as the “ability to create.” Innovation is defined as, “the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements or forms; a change made in the nature or fashion of anything; something newly introduced; a novel practice, method, etc.” These differences, while somewhat minor, are significant. Creativity suggests processes, or a set of conditions that are conducive to making things (objects, services, ideas, and so on). Innovation, on the other hand, implies that the “things” created are in some way unique or previously non-existent. What I will attempt to do on the DBL Blog is explore each of these concepts as well as how they overlap. What follows is my current thinking about the relationship between creativity, innovation, and library service design.

Contrary to popular perception, creativity is not a quality that a person is either born with or without. Creativity can be nurtured, or squashed, by environmental conditions, procedures, techniques, and interpersonal relationships. Librarians have it within their abilities to engineer workplaces that allow creativity to take root and flourish. On the flip side of creativity is innovation. Innovation is the outcome of creative processes. Making something that is considered new or novel is the result of a series of creations, some of which fail and some of which succeed, and all of which move the innovations forward. Innovations, as I see them, also foster creativity. By introducing a new element into the mix, innovation opens up new paths for creation.

Throughout this exploration, I will assume that both creativity and innovation are intrinsically beneficial for library services. Libraries exist in a marketplace that is more crowded with goods and services than ever before. People have a seemingly endless array of options for fulfilling their information and community needs. To thrive in this competitive environment, librarians must develop novel approaches to designing services and experiences so that they connect with the people they aim to serve, satisfy unmet needs, and achieve enough visibility to gain awareness. Furthermore, the pace of change is always accelerating. Creative and innovative libraries will be able to adapt to these changes, while libraries that don’t innovate their service designs on a routine basis will quickly lose traction. It’s true that not everything that’s new is by definition good. But since innovation feeds back into creativity, even innovative failures are useful in that they allow us to view problems in different lights and to create in different ways. This point leads to another core assumption I will make: creativity and innovation entail risk and risk is good for libraries. Librarians with low risk tolerances will not be able to sustain the environment necessary to support creativity or innovation. We must concede that if we want the benefits of creativity and innovation, we must accept the inevitable failures that result from trying something new and welcome them as learning experiences.

I hope this gives you a good sense of how I’m thinking about creativity and innovation as they apply to designing library services. I’m interested to know your thoughts and questions on these topics too so that I can address them as we move this conversation forward. My upcoming posts will focus on what the literature and case studies have to teach us about these topics, which I consider to be some of the most important in librarianship today.

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