Some thoughts from this program at Providence College on 11/15/2007

Jill Stover: Off the Wall but On the Mark

How do you get started generating useful ideas?

Looking for the “white spaces” (kind of like negative space in art) — places where there is a need and no current functionality to serve it.

Creative process: Divergent thinking –> Incubation –> Convergent thinking

Dangerous to skip the incubation step! Must “live with” an idea for a while *before* rejecting it.

Access is important — but we need to find how we add value.

Creative people have “a beginner’s mind” — cleared your mind of the baggage of pre-conceived notions.

Idea of being observant to things that might normally escape notice. Example: a cup of tea with the tea bag string wrapped around the handle. Is this white space? Is there opportunity here?

Rules for brainstorming — withhold judgement on ideas; encourage wild and exaggerated ideas; quantity of ideas more important than quality; building off the ideas of others; be supportive of all ideas

John Blyberg — Innovation

Need to have rock-solid infrastructure before you can support innovation (John is coming from an IT in libraries background).

John says that if staff in his library want to do something with technology — he never says no! But — he does let the staff know what is involved and demands that the staff make a commitment to the project in the long run. Sometimes knowing what resources are going to be required is enough for the staff member not to pursue it.

Jessamyn West — Sleeper 2.0: Agitprop Problem Solving

http://librarian.net/talks/agitprop

Interesting perspective on the Seattle Public Library — may be really striking and beautiful, but not really very easy to work in — if book truck is on the spiral staircase, no one else can use it.

Some wrap-up thoughts — we are a field that has a tension — we are both very traditional and on the cutting edge technologically. Putting innovation in place can be difficult in traditional environments.

Important not to get too personally invested in any particular project. Some will succeed, some will fail — but that’s ok. There have to be failures in innovation.