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True Story about a Horrible Business meeting where "we already do that" killed all innovation ideas.

*Intelligence is wildly overrated as a virtue.* What holds us back is not that we’re not smart enough. “Yeah yeah yeah, we do that”—self-delusion is a big obstacle. If we talked about it, it’s happening?

Internet designed to be a network of networks: exchange and share information (interoperable). Exchange, sharing and interoperability.

Real big potential win for libraries: on an organizational level: which partners, colleagues and peers should we interoperate with? For us as an organization (not just as a creator of technologies.)

The most important product of the Mines… (Obligatory Profound Design Quote) is the Miner.
(Not the stuff they did out of the ground. It’s the people. It’s the system. It’s the human capital.)

The most Important product of the network is the networker. The kinds of networks we build…depend on what kinds of networkers we really want people to be.

What’s the most Important Product of the Library?

Mission statements, public documents that answer this question.
(Readers) and (Research)
“A Scholar is a Library’s Way of Creating Another library.”
What SHOULD the most important Product of the Library be?

What institutional innovations and adaptations best boost your chances of getting there? (And who owns the keys?)

“Competition” –like “innovation"�is a means to an End.
Frenemies/Froes? Are people a competitor or a co-marketer?
Spectre of competition—Institutions seek protection, instead of rising to the challenge.

“Competition” is about Perceived Value from Choice.
Newspaper circulation has stayed flat since 1950. Average reader age: 56.
Newspapers don’t know how to compete. Reluctance to creatively compete.
Rupert Murdock always buys the 2nd best—he competes. It’s the perceived value.

Libraries as physical spaces that house books and artifacts= no competition. We’re great.
Libraries as information=huge space to compete in.
Libraries are creatures of subsidy rather than market forces.

How do your uses and user communities brand you as a competitor?
“Serving the community” “Serving the underserved”
Permit Competition
Or
Permit Subsidy
?

4 particular things as suggested actions
1. Learning from our Lead users. (What is the segment of users that we learn the most from? Not just segments—but segments we learn from.)
2. With Whom Do we want to collaborate to Create value? Why?
(Collaborative—who creates value…what are our organizational protocols?)
3. Nurturing our Best Internal Arguments/Disagreements (be transparent—make your user know what’s going on. Don’t seal off the complexity
4. Establishing “Liberatory” (a mash-up of library and laboratory) that best attract talent and inspire hypotheses.

What does the institution itself stand for? Provoke new thinking and new value.
Success comes not from taking the path of least resistance but the path of maximum advantage.

Alice's note: Once again, hotels are not willing to provide widespread wifi access without paying through the nose in the 4 digit range. So Beth Gallaway and a few other library bloggers sat on the sides and took notes to post later.
These are them...

Full house! Lots of people here. In fact, the hotel staff started bringing in more chairs…


Andrew Pace kicks off the Symposium
Creativity Exercise:
What is your Greatest Resource?
What is your Greatest Challenge?
What if…(dangerous ideas)
*We stopped cataloging?
*We participated fully with the FBI? (Sienfeld’s Library Cop)
*We mased up Connexion x WoW=WorldCat of Warcraft…

Michael Schrage (keynote)

The Content of the Audience is more important than the Content of the Talk.
The economics of innovation:
How do organizations use models and prototypes and manage risks and innovation?
Emphasis: Managing the challenge of institution innovation. (immovable bureacracies?)
Is it harder for a good library to be innovative than an entrepreneur?

Definition: Innovation is the Conversion of “Novelty” into “Value”
Whose novelty? Whose value?

Innovation is a means to an end. (Not an end unto itself.)
Is innovation a spice? Or the whole meal? Forces the organization to address what it really does.

*Innovation isn’t what innovators offer, it’s what customers, clients and users ADOPT.

Mobile phone: How many of us know how to use more than 20% of the features of our phones? (This isn’t being innovative for phone companies to create new, little used features…it’s being wasteful.)

We need a different paradigm: Move away from “creation of choice” and toward “Value from Use”
Make the center of gravity= Value for Use. Measure THAT.

Ask your users: “What’s the most Innovative thing you think we do?”

A Preamble

I'm one of those moms who never censors what my children read. Occasionally I'll wince when a certain book comes home, but I truly believe any reading is good reading. Sure, my 12-year-old mixes Dickens and Wilkie Collins with some of the lamest YA I've run across. I won't lie. But she's a reader, and that's what's important. (She reads great YA too, don't get me wrong. She's reading Libby Bray's latest now.)

My newly-minted-7-year-old just checked out his first chapter book. He's gone from 0 to 60 in the reading department this year and he was so proud of his first selection: A Pokemon book. Did I wince? Absolutely. Am I thrilled to write down each chapter on his reading sheet for school? You bet I am. This is a day to be celebrated.

That being said, I've been browsing the library and the bookstore for youngish chapter books I think he'd like. Megan McDonald's Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid caught my attention right away. Now on to the review:

Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid #1
by Megan McDonald, illustrations by Peter H. Reynolds

Stink is short. He's the shortest kid in his class, and the shortest kid in his family. But being short is the least of his problems. The biggest? His big sister is none other than Judy Moody and she happily reminds poor Stink that he's short.*

"Bad news," said Judy.
"What?" asked Stink.
"You're shorter than you were this morning. One quarter inch shorter!"

Poor Stink. It's difficult to be reminded of your short-comings on a daily basis, but he's an optimistic kid with a ton of energy. Stink loves school and participates wholeheartedly in taking care of the class pet (a painful chapter), in Presidents' Day activities, and in doing his homework. I loved the chapters concerning Stink's Presidents' Day homework assignments, assignments he devotes to his favorite President, James Madison. Stink's first name is also James, and James Madison was only 5 feet 4 inches tall.

McDonald writes in a winning easy-to-read style; her prose is contemporary, lively, and full of good humor. Peter H. Reynolds illustrates the Stink books both with friendly pencil drawings of Stink, his family, and his class and with Stink's wonderful comics. (Stink's comic strips are genius. They are both straightforward and nonsensical in the way only children's stories can be.)

Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid is highly recommended for the new independent readers of the world.
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*My kids are Judy and Stink. The Stink books are for all the younger brothers of the world.