1. Have a mission that matters

2. Think big but start small  (like Google Books)

3. Strive for continual innovation, not instant perfection (iterative process teaches valuable lessons)

4. Look for ideas everywhere

5. Share everything (encourages discussion, exchange & re-interpretation of ideas leading unexpected and innovative outcomes)

6. Spark with imagination, fuel with data (Google recruits people who believe the impossible can become a reality, like driverless cars, & they encourage blue-sky thinking through 20% time, a full day a week where engineers can work on whatever they want)

7. Be a platform (“Open technologies … allow anyone, anywhere to apply their unique skills, perspectives & passions to create new products & features on top of [Google] platforms)

8. Never fail to fail (good example, Google is known for YouTube, which it bought, not Google Video Player — “learn from your mistakes and correct fast. Google Answers was retired after 4 years.)

These pillars resonate so much with me because Rebecca and I have been talking about these things for years in workshops, consulting, and coaching.  It’s great to see such a wonderful list from a talented lady.  Wojcicki also says that “nurturing a culture that allows for innovation is key” — tough but doable in my opinion, and also necessary for every organization.  Innovation is what distinguishes your organization.  Go for it!

* Put the user at the center

* Let the user collaborate on the user experience in your organization

* Curate the human interface

Other suggestions included getting out of the library building and becoming community managers and hubs of information.  Libraries can do this very well as they are respected and credible for giving neutral information.  The Edmonton Public Library hired 11 community managers last year who are doing wonderful things in their community.

I loved Pat’s comment that “the story is the new killer app” — what a great message for libraries.  See her presentation here, but fast forward through the part where I pretend to be Tom Hogan Senior!  Watch for an interview with Patricia Martin coming soon from the Shanachies on TWIL, This Week in Libraries.

I started a conversation this morning with my monthly breakfast group (a bunch of interesting thinkers and achievers) by saying, “I’m looking for someone who can talk about what organizations need in order to be innovative  — what needs to be in place in their environment to stimulate innovation and new ways of doing things”.  This spawned a whole discussion around “what is innovation” — incremental continuous improvement?  new products (like snowboards, post-it notes or ipods in their day).   We then started talking about what needed to be in place to encourage innovation — leadership championship, climate of allowing mistakes (but then we digressed into successes coming from learning experiences/mistakes), time (Google’s 20% of your time to play with what interests you), and then breakfast was over…. so I’m still thinking about what needs to be added to the list and hope you will help me articulate the ideal environment for stimulating innovation by adding comments.

In the meantime, one of my buddies pointed me to the PwC Innovation Blog by Sheldon Laube, Chief Innovation Officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers whose job is to “accelerate innovation by inspiring new ideas and reducing the barriers to their implementation”.  His most recent post is about how recognition is something special and shows that what really motivates people in his organization is professional development and networking activities.  I love his post about the Gorilla in the Room, partly because he talks about the video that I have Dave Snowden show in the past, but especially for articulating the following,

“often companies are missing what is right in front of them and don’t even realize it. As this article points out, “breakthroughs are less about the act of inventing new things than they are the art of recognizing “happy accidents”… at the end of the day, if a company doesn’t have the internal processes and structures in place to spot the happy accidents already taking place, why will it do a better job recognizing any new, great ideas that it receives through crowdsourcing, open innovation efforts or other methodologies?”

So now I’m doubly excited that Stephen has posted a list of library labs (Stephen’s Lighthouse: “Library Innovation Labs & Incubators” — thank you sweetie!!); I had no idea that there were so many, particularly in the academic sector. Excellent. Now, look at the public sector: there are 3. That’s right. Three.

I still think there’s a role for the government agencies supporting libraries, although they are only for the public sector. Plus, what am I saying? Academic sector — public sector — what we need is cross-sector.  The best ideas — the most innovative concepts often come from cross-collaboration. Perhaps the role can be filled by the associations?

Or….she says with a grin — how about an accelerator? ReadWriteWeb reports on a Montreal “accelerator” firm “Year One Labs”.  The brain-child of four guys who describe themselves as being “from the trenches” will guide, mentor, prod and get your concept “out there” to help you develop, pilot, and launch.  

Imagine this for libraries — a cross-sector accelerator — that doesn’t look at libraries as the ultimate benefiters, but looks at people as the benefiters.

There’s a lot to like about this initiative, not the least of which is that it is approaching library service management from the “full” perspective — from idea to design, development, pilot, delivery, management, maturity, and finally divestment.  Libraries have not (to my knowledge anyway) had R & D functions — which is absolutely critical for new concepts.

Wouldn’t it be cool if some of the agencies supporting libraries adopted this lab model too?

Stack View (below)  is a book “neighborhood visualizer” designed to allow users to browse Harvard’s virtual library stacks. Stack View is a project of the model library lab at Harvard Law School. Image credit: Jeff Goldenson—Harvard Law School Library.

And, it’s Dave Stewart too.  His book “Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide” (there’s a free chapter by the way) advises that those with the idea shouldn’t be expected to implement the idea; their strength is in the idea, and in helping to nurture the idea so that those with the ability to implement can help the idea come to life.  As Stewart says, he’d rather see 10% of an idea become reality than 100% of the idea not realized.

Yet that’s so difficult for so many people.  It is “their” idea, and the ownership of that idea is important for them — rightly so.  Too often the idea-generator isn’t comfortable handing over the fledging idea for refinement and implementation to others; it’s their “baby”  and they want to be a part of its growth and maturing, and they want credit for the idea. How often have we seen those implementing a new concept taking credit for the concept or idea? So why wouldn’t the idea-generator want to continue to lead the implementation? Well……unfortunately, people who are strong idea-generators aren’t always strong implementers.  The result may be that both the implementation and the idea sour.  What’s sad is that people may then think the “idea” was flawed from the get-go when, in fact, the idea had great merit but the implementation was faulty.

With so much pressure these days to be “innovative”, organizations need to make the stages of the innovation process clear, and then acknowledge and reward those involved in each stage.  Those “polymathers” (is that the right word?) — those in your organizations like Jane Dysart or Dave Stewart who can create concepts and innovative ideas must be acknowledged and rewarded for their critical role in that early stage of  innovation process.  They also have to be  supported in turning the ideas over for implementation, and in helping the idea grow in ways they never imagined.

Years ago at Esso I worked with an incredibly creative, selfless guy who said something I’ve never forgotten, “It’s just an idea…..it’s nothing more than idea until somebody who knows how to make it happen takes over, and that’s not me.  I don’t have time to make it happen – I’m expected to find the next idea.”

Wow….so how does your organization or library handle new ideas? Does the person with the idea have to “prove” that there’s something to it? Or do others help nurture the idea and work together to determine the best way to move it forward?

The other thing I like about Stewart’s book is that he feels brainstorming sessions can be a waste of time. AGREED! Even though organizations sometimes ask me to facilitate these, I always think “I don’t want storms in people’s brains – I want them exploring concepts or unknowns together — -listening to each other, REALLY listening and respecting each other perspectives on a particular problem or issue.”  To explore together people need to respect each other, hear each other and have confidence in themselves and each other. And recognize that if even 10% of their idea takes flight because someone else gives it wings, that’s better than 100% of the idea never getting off the ground.

Hey Jane – what’s your next idea?

TRIZ is founded by a Russian scientist — the practitioners of TRIZ will say it’s the greatest method out there. It relies on a semantics-based technology which has the logic built in.  While listening to Kiho, I checked out TRIZ on wikipedia – TRIZ is the theory of solving inventor’s problems” or “The theory of inventor’s problem solving”. It was developed by a Soviet engineer and researcher Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues starting in 1946. It has been evolving ever since.

Interesting – I’m going to follow-up with Kiho after today’s sessions to get a better understanding.

Kiho Sohn overview of innovation process at KMWorld 2009

I love Charlene’s slide of 4 focus areas surrounding the client: enterprise strategy, customer strategy, leadership & management, innovation & practices.  Her tips, which I think apply more broadly than just tech planning:

* Leaders must let go of control but not relinquish command, create sandbox convenants to allow risk taking, creat a culture of sharing & model it

* organizations must connect to customers on their own terms, develop internal processes to connect with customers in real time, integrate the customer voice across the whole enterprise

* enterprises must allow all units to pilot new technologies & processes, design process scenarios around user roles, invest in innovation

* to innovate, organizations must fail fast & fail smart, inject fresh external thinking, enable safe places where mistakes and learning is encouraged.

I am sure you will enjoy her presentation on Wednesday November 18 in San Jose at KMWorld 2009. In the meantime, on the KMWorld 2009 conference blog yesterday I pointed to a podcast of Charlene Li. Check it out too!

Search is

• shortening the distance between users & offerings
• all about information management and information enables business
• a high end productivity tool

I loved John’s definition of innovation: a set of capabilities that allows continuous realization of a desired future. Some of his quotes: “Innovation drives, and is an enabler of, transformation, giving it a goal or desired direction.” “Innovation blossoms in diverse settings.” “Innovation comes through conversations in different disciplines.” Scientists, designers, and many others are “actors in a value chain for innovation.” It’s the “business processes that take innovation from the lab into the business.” And I really look forward to his Harvard Business Review article coming out early in the new year on new business models using systems integrators — the systems integrator model for building new businesses — a “born global strategy” where parts of the organization are decentralized all over the world. “Units of action are decentralized from a global array of resources.” It will be a “fundamental transformation in the way ventures are formed.”