SCL/Carnegie Trust Innovation talk
Manchester 1 September 2014
Like the lyrics provided on certain album sleeves, this is not exactly what I said at the event. It includes some bits I cut ‘live’ for
reasons of time and doesn’t have some of the asides and diversions that responded to the moment (and meant I had to cut some
bits.) It also includes some links to hopefully useful material.
In their book excellent book Innovative Intelligence, David S Weiss and Claude P Legrand identify a 4-stage process for innovation
practices. It starts with
1. Identifying the framework and boundaries, then
2. Digs under the surface for underlying issues, moves from there to
3. Ideas generation and concludes with
4. Implementation planning of what you’ll actually do.
It’s a neat summary, if a little linear and tidied up. That said, it’s a structure, so I’m going to slightly echo it in the structure of what I
say in the next 40 minutes or so
I’m going to:
1. Reflect on my research into adaptive resilience, why innovation matters to adaptive resilience and why that matters at all
beyond your ability to use buzzwords that are probably about to go out of fashion soon anyway
2. Reflect on the thought processes and questions that accompany innovative practice and why they might feel more urgent
now than at some other points in the past
3. Key elements of innovation/innovative practice
4. Throw out some thoughts that may be relevant to libraries innovation so if nothing else you can criticise them later – because
my own experience is that often innovation starts with a feeling that something else is not good enough, or as powerful as it
needs to be.
I should perhaps start by saying a little about my connection to libraries and how that informs what I’m going to say today.
Like the most clichéd writer I first first made my own connections to not just books but also ideas and politics in my local library Connections beyond the ones being good boy at school made for me. Later I spent several years as the Literature Development
Worker for Cleveland – although not part of the library services. LDW days held frustration as well as enjoyment and gratitude. A bit
like teachers and schools, I found librarians and libraries the both wonderful and frustrating places and people. I’ll spare you the full
story of the stand up row in Stockton library (many years ago now) when they refused to put out leaflets for my poetry magazine
because it was neither run by the Council nor a registered charity. But suffice to say the intimate connection to people, communities
and place was not always, or even often, accompanied by an appetite for trying something different. Thankfully, the work of many
others subsequently changed that, …
In the last year I have been to a dozen libraries across NE and Yorkshire as part of New Writing North’s Read Regional promotion
meeting librarians and readers to read from and perform and talk about my book How I Learned to Sing, after it was chosen for the
promotion. If anything proves William Gibson’s oft-quoted dictum that the future is here but unevenly distributed, touring regional
libraries might be it… (Read more, and some reviews, samples and a readers guide here http://howilearnedtosing.blogspot.co.uk )
My work as Thinking Practice also takes me into a number of arts and library-related areas I’ll use to illustrate some of my points
today.
Why resilient? Why adaptive?
I’ve written some papers based on research in the arts, business and natural ecology around what I call adaptive resilience.
(Making Adaptive Resilience Real and then a paper with Tony Nwachukwu on The Role of Diversity in Building Adaptive Resilience.
There are other reflections on the subject on my blog.)) – I try not to use the word resilience on its own as it is too negative for me,
too much about pure survival rather than continued usefulness and purpose. I’ve studied lots of arts organisations – from large to
small – and reviewed a lot of literature, from a variety of backgrounds – natural ecology, business, psychological. I’ve also looked at
the particular role diversity has to play, to help Arts Council England think through their Creative Case for Diversity. Much of the
interest in the word resilience has come about because of the tough times we’ve lived in. One of the points I’ve made a lot in recent
years though is that tough times are not a new thing – indeed, it’s always tough times for some people. My interest in resilience and
the adaptiveness at the heart of sustaining a shared purpose also began in relatively good days of funding, and the work we did
developing the cultural infrastructure in North East England.
That first library, Lostock Hall library near Preston in Lancashire, was in a place that must have been adaptive and resilient because
a series of its reasons for being had died away – first the mills and then the railway depot. (My granddad drove one of the last
steam trains out of Lostock Hall in 68, that library literally a stone’s throw away.) I’m not someone who thinks the world is going to
end, whether by world you mean publically funded arts and libraries, or local economies. No, I have a strong suspicion it’s already
ended, and we simply carried on our merry creative way anyway…(You can read a poem which remembers that library here, on the
Writers for Libraries site http://writersforlibraries.wordpress.com/category/mark-robinson/)
A key point is that just is resilient isn’t actually something you only need in a crisis, although you do draw on it then, or a final state
of being so much a set of actions and practices, so innovation isn’t a thing you can buy off the shelf, or pull out of the cupboard in a
crisis– it’s a set of actions, disciplines and approaches – a way of thinking and a set of practices, questions, approaches.
In some ways the arts have had to be resilient because they have not been statutory services in the way libraries have. They have
had to find new arguments, and to change their ways of working.
I identified 8 characteristics of organisations that tended to be adaptive and resilient: (A more detailed description can be found here
http://www.thinkingpractice.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/culturecrunchcharacteristics.pdf.
 Shared purpose and culture and values – ideal thing being that this is shared both internally externally
 Assets of all kinds
 Predictable financial resources
 Networks and collaborations
 Leadership and governance
 Management of vulnerabilities
 Situation Awareness
 Adaptive Capacity - innovation
My research suggested that alongside some other factors the ability to embed ‘innovation’ into how you work – adaptive capacity was key. This is the ability to adapt what you do to deliver your shared purpose. This requires digging into what that purpose is: the
shared purpose of the village I grew up in was never really to be handy for the cotton mills, or the trains, for the people who lived
there – it was to be a decent place to earn a living and raise families, or live with neighbours. In the arts we are having to think
through the purposes, as are libraries. We need though to be clear about that purpose and not give up more than we need, for fear
of changing it fundamentally. (This is something I worry about, for instance, with the centralisation of library services in fewer
places, with the effect of taking ‘libraries’ out of the immediate localities in which many people live their lives.)
Why adaptive?
Why do you need to be able to change to be resilient? Because how you fulfil your role in the world is likely to change. This is not a
bad thing. Innovation allows you to do more than survive – it drives the change.
There are lots of ways answering the question ‘why do we have to change?’ I might say, why not? I might say, to see what
happens? It might be fun. Enriching, make the world bigger or smaller, help you do even more of what you set out to? But mainly I
would say because the world is changing and you will want to carry on enjoying and contributing to it according to your purpose and
values, even if bits are it get harder or horribler or more exciting or all three.
I think of the forces driving that change as two four letter words: MORE and LESS.
There is MORE:
Complexity > and less clarity
Ambiguity > and less confidence
Speed > and less time
Expectation > and less patience
Information > and less respect
Connectivity > and less connection
Willingness to pay for some things > and less for others
Inequality > and less progression
So what are those thought processes?
Firstly, it’s about seeing innovation as more than simply doing something new; it is also what happens with that new thing, what use
you put it too, how it leads to a new normal. The most adaptive organisations connect it to their assets and their core purpose, and
are up for changing ‘how we do things around here.’
NESTA have done much work in this area and Some argue for a definition of research and development in the arts that is closer to
the scientific or industrial purpose, where methods and outcomes are ‘explicit and capable of generalisation across the sector’
(Bakhshi et al 2010). This means innovation is not simply something new – it’s something that can be copied, built into a new –
though probably short-lived – normal.
Within large bodies like public library services or larger organisations, or within whole ecologies such as an artform, say, there is a
connection between innovation and heritage – revolt and remembering – that leads to change and more resilient ecologies. In what
is known as panarchy, the cycles of growth-consolidation-release and reorganisation connect or leap into new cycles, some faster
some slower – allowing the slower, usually larger systems to incorporate change and disturbance from the smaller, faster cycles.
How innovation?
So what processes or questions might you start with? I would begin by identifying the problem/issue/need – and what system does
it live in? An example from the art world might be how some areas are tackling low levels of participation. The Creative People and
Places scheme aims to improve levels of participation but there are lots of ways to tackle this. I have been working with bait, the
South East Northumberland CPP who have taken an approach based on extensive community consultation and conversation and
then considering the whole system in which participation happens to identify underlying causes of distance both geographical and
psychological and then working with stakeholders and local people to create new approaches and partnerships. Starting where
people are, but knowing changes in working must come, and building in review to see what works best.
The key thought processes of innovation for me can be put simplistically: Start with the users, and the world their issues live in.
Then analysis, questioning and coming up with new approaches, based on your understanding and knowledge of what’s been done
elsewhere – then trying, failing no doubt even if just a little but. And then thinking your way forward again. (I have written recently
about the importance – and limitations – of risk taking and failure in Native, the journal of the NESTA/ACE Digital R&D Fund, in an
article called The F Word. I conclude we also needed a bit more of the C word – Change.)
What if? How to respond? Why doesn’t it work? How can we use…? What went wrong there we can learn from? (Refer to The F
Word) – learn most from looking at what went wrong within our successes.
Key elements of successful innovation: or hot not end up a frustrated innovator
Firstly make this a core part of your professional practice, not a treat, burden or other kind of extra. Start with the users and their
world and This might be a complicated system map, it might be some straightforward feedback. Connect it to your assets and
networks, even the resources you have available – that way you won’t end up the kind of frustrated innovator who goes round in
circles with an idea you cannot deliver. That means knowing yourself, but being imaginative with it. It also means looking around for
things to copy and adapt, rather than start from scratch. Sometimes you need a spade, and there’s a good template for those. You
don’t need a GSP guided programmable unmanned tractor – unless you’re a farmer with a very very large farm. The key point is
context.
Fail. And talk about it. Puchdrunk example is talked about in the Native article. Punchdrunk were supported by the R&D Fund to see
how they might take their immersive theatrical experiences and make them available to online experience. Sleep No More
experiment didn’t really work as they had hoped, due to the technological ambition of the project. But the next one, at Aldeburgh
festival, was much closer to what was hoped because of the learning. Innovation is a process of trial and error, and a practice that
gets better with, well, practice.
Build in the review. How do we adapt our norms? What do we stop doing as a result of what we are doing? Who can help? Sharing
innovative practice. Use assets, networks, build creativity. Invite others in to your innovation. AS an example, work people at mima
did with the Tees valley visual arts network was more than user testing or focus group – it was opening up the creative problems.
Co-design is a crucial part of adaptive innovation because it builds in a kind of diversity that top-down innovation does now. (
Without that process of embedding innovation, the system as a whole becomes more vulnerable to unexpected disturbance. The
innovations may often be small, but they lead to something stronger. They are also easier to base on what you have – rather than
the deficits of funding etc. Carnegie can say more about Asset Based Community Development but I would very much argue for
asset-based adaptive resilience, based on asset-based innovation. That builds in sustainability and helps avoid The Poverty Trap,
where a feeling that funding is never sufficient for aspiration comes to shape behaviours in a damaging way. No financial flexibility is
generated, as all funding is put into activity, and therefore they are always vulnerable to disturbance, even success.
Relevance for libraries
The adaptive cycle is an unforgiving one. But one public libraries, for all their continuity, have been part of that since they became
common. Innovations in printing made books cheaper, more accessible. Rising literacy rates increased demand that private libraries
could not meet. Innovative legislation and funding put in place a network that became part of the new normal. At the time.
Sometimes innovation can come from looking back. I put the seemingly old-fashioned membership libraries like the Lit&Phil in
Newcastle together with the freemium model and wonder what innovation thinking about the public library as a free app, with in-app
purchases for additional benefits might bring? I then get a bit nervous abut access and equity and need to fold those things in
somehow, but that’s one of the things about innovation: it should make you feel a bit uncomfortable I think. If it’s too confortable
maybe you’re not going far enough. So how might we shift to a ‘Bookify’ model without shutting people out? How do we curate the
information of the googlesphere, rather than simply police it?
Because neither innovation or adaptive resilience is about making you feel comfortable. They are making you more powerful in the
world., more able to make your own choices, take your own responsibility, based on your values, and those of your communities,
rather than have them imposed upon you by the market or brute finance.
To repeat myself: I’d say all the fundamental issues start from users’ needs. I think back to when libraries were most important in
my life, and when they weren’t, which to be honest has been recent years.
But for at least two periods, 3 if you count university, libraries were crucial: as a teenager with few books in the house, and as a
young chef establishing myself as a writer, then magazine editor then poetry publisher and promoter. Libraries helped me find 4
things:
1. ideas – those founding ideas I still live by
2. inspiration – the books that I still think of as a teenager, and as a recent graduate completing my self-education
3. information – how to start a poetry magazine, how to layout a page, write a press release, do a cv, get to university
4. kit – there was a time access to a photocopier for only a few pence was a creative step forward for me – York City Library gave
me access to technology I had no other way of accessing at the time and that meant I could use its enlarge function for my clumsy
collages for my magazine. The photocopier, The computer, the 3d printer, who knows what in the future… (Do any libraries have
video conferencing facilities for times when Skype may not be enough or suitable?) The rise of makerlabs is a really interesting and
exciting shift I can see libraries having a role in. Although I’ve written a rather sceptical review for Native, the NESTA journal, of
Chris Andersen’s book Makers, I was more sceptical about his book than the makers themselves or the ultimate potential for new
making technology.
I urge you not to start with money, with savings. Start with the users and the potential users. How are you going to get me back into
the library when I can access so much on my phone? Flip things around and see what falls out. Don’t look at me as a lapsed library
user, but as someone who still wants ideas, inspiration, information and – very differently – kit and could want it from a public
library. What kinds of events and technology can I not find elsewhere? When do I want it? (My local library could have got me back
as a user some years ago by the very simple innovation, for them, of not closing at 12.30 on a Saturday, the only time I was likely to
pass. I know Saturday afternoons cost, but really, sometimes innovation is not rocket science, it’s a question of attitude…)
Maybe the innovation question is not what do users want, but what do they need changing or inventing? As leaders, you need to
talk about change as much as about maintaining services, and about the failures within projects as much as the successes.
(Though don’t fetishise failure like the arts have done. Research I cite in NESTA article on The F Word shows we learn most from
looking back at successful projects – but only if we look at the failure within them – whilst other research suggests we learn more
from positive experiences than negative ones.) You need to judge yourselves and other by how much change they successfully
bring to their services. Not how many pilot schemes – but how much change that lasts, at least for a little while. You need to keep
some time and ideally budget for innovation and experimentation.
So: innovation matters to libraries for me because I want libraries to last and sustain themselves – but to continue to play the core
purpose of making ideas, inspiration, information and cutting edge technology genuinely usable by all areas of our population, which
means being both adaptive and resilient in these times of more and less. It is our adaptive capacity that means we can utilise
assets, networks and our shared purpose – and innovation is the protein that builds that.
Mark Robinson
Thinking Practice
www.thinkingpractice.co.uk
@thinkinpractice
© Thinking Practice 2014
Usable under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 2.0 (England & Wales) licence.