A Pecha Kucha talk for Internet Librarian 2009.

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Innovation
Smoothies
Blending ideas
from different worlds
Nicole Hennig
MIT Libraries
twitter.com/nic221
Welcome to Innovation Smoothies! Today I’ll talk about making creative
thinking techniques a daily practice with an emphasis on blending ideas
from outside the world of libraries. I drink a smoothie for breakfast
every day and it blends organic fruit and leafy greens. We can blend
ideas daily, too!

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Repeating the same problems.
In the library world we are facing many of the same problems
everywhere. We often discuss and agree on which problems we’re facing,
but we don’t often seem to come up with concrete ideas for solving
them.

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Practice creativity
Recently I read a book called “Thinkertoys”... it’s is chock full of
exercises and games that go way beyond traditional brainstorming. So
we decided to use a few of these techniques for some visioning
exercises with our staff.

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What if libraries were like?
Zipcar
What if libraries were like?
YouTube
What if libraries were like?
Netflix

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Queue, no due dates
a queue
no due dates
purchase on demand

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Text to extend reservation,
Zipcar pays for the gas.
Text message reminders, easy to extend reservation.
Membership works in different cities.
Delight users by not making them pay for gas or insurance.

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Good Brands Report
2009
PSFK.com
Utility, Experimentation, Design, Community and listening
PSFK is a trends research, innovation company.

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“The best way to have a good idea is to
have lots of ideas.”
—Linus Pauling
We need to generate and try more ideas on a regular basis. It’s OK if
many of them “fail.”

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Creativity on a schedule
What if we set up a regular schedule of creative thinking workshops for
our staff? What if we agreed to make live at least 5 new services per
year?

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Reward success & failure
the most creative people... have
the greatest number of failures
because they do the most stuff
http://bit.ly/2LxRZM

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What makes people feel OK
about taking risks?
- assurances that less-than-ideal outcomes
would not negatively affect their career (49%)
- clear direction and support from leadership to
take risks (31%).
http://bit.ly/4do4gY

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1.What were your contributions to successful
innovation of the organization?
2.What were some of the new things you tried
that didn’t work out? What did you learn?
http://bit.ly/4CzKr
You should have a list of things you tried
that didn’t work out

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A place to experiment

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libraries.mit.edu/betas
MIT Libraries Betas

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Read

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Flexibly changing course
- Flickr began as a game.
- Paypal began as a way for PDAs
to beam money to each other.

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Subscribe
So important to read blogs from outside our own field. Some of my
favorites are here. You’ve probably heard of or watched the famous TED
Talks videos, but have you watched the videos from Pop Tech? A similar
conference held in Camden, Maine?

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Attend
Some of the best ideas come from non-library conferences, too. One of
my favorites is GEL: Good Experience Live, held in New York City for 2
days each spring. One day is field trips where you experience “good” and
the next day is filled with inspiring presentations from many fields.

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GEL: Good Experience Live
Garret Oliver, Brewmaster of the
Brooklyn Brewery
http://www.gelconference.com/videos/
Day 1: direct experiences - tours, seminars, workshops - all across New York City.
Day 2: "theater day," when all 400-or-so attendees convene in the theater to hear over a
dozen speakers present on-stage.

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Get these slides: http://bit.ly/nic-pres
Image credits: http://bit.ly/3Zs75K | Twitter @nic221
So let’s go out and delight our users with new
innovative services. I invite you to download my
slides and follow me on Twitter @nic221. Thank you!