jumpstarting innovation

Recently, Working Knowledge (from the Harvard Business School) had an article on Jumpstarting innovation: Using disruption to your advantage. Not surprisingly, this article is geared toward the commercial sector, but many of the ideas can be adapted for libraries and information agencies. For example, the author advises us to listen to, and perhaps more importantly, learn from the people who use our services. This has been operationalized in research libraries by using this type of thinking to drive the specifics of institutional repository implementation with the repository as a way of (potentially) addressing issues related to the current model of scholarly communication. Further advice in the article to "expand your horizons" can been seen as a potential impetus for the creation of 23 things at the Charlotte & Mechlenburg County Public Library.

One question that remains is how the advice in the article can be applied to libraries and information agencies. Perhaps the best thing to do would be just jump right in. You can do this by using the tools provided to analyze the disruptive trends in your organization, analyze the ideas about these trends for potential value and then prioritizing and implementing the ideas. Even if it's possible to only implement a few of the ideas, going through the exercise helps create an environment that values innovation and fosters an innovative spirit, which may be the most important thing.