Darwin and the Demon: Connections with H807

Moore, Geoffrey A, (2004), Darwin and the Demon: Innovating Within Established Enterprises, Harvard Business Review; Jul/Aug 2004, VOl 82, Issue 7/8, p86-92, 7P, 1


This article was recommended background reading during week 3 of H807, where we were looking at who innovates and who follows. I have written some notes on the article on Google Docs.The author is a managing director of TCG Advisors, a strategy consultancy based in San Mateo California. The company declares; We specialize in a set of challenges common to technology companies and technology-related sectors, where rapid changes in market dynamics force frequent adjustments in corporate strategy.


The technology and consumer market focus of the article means that its relevance in the world of education is not wholesale. In educational circles, we are offering a professional service, and I question whether the consumer product model fits precisely. However, I can see that the article has a number of aspects that can be applied in H807 assignments, as well as in my own work.

1. The different types of innovation are a useful structure for reviewing the various case studies we are asked to study and report on in TMA1
2. When interviewing my innovator for TMA2, the innovation types and the market life cycle might offer a good basis on which to analyse the innovation, the innovator and the market life cycle position her company is in.
3. The 'overcoming inertia' guidelines will have relevance for educational organisations that are having difficulty in getting existing staff involved in adopting innovations. To some extent that is true in my own organisation where experienced staff are proving somewhat reluctant to participate in elearning
4. Deciding what type of innovation the redesign of our current elearning programme is will help me focus on the right activity for my H807 ECA.
5. The section on 'overcoming inertia' resonates with the change management work that my company undertakes

Doug Hall's criteria for judging innovation

Quick reminder to myself, on the subject of successful innovation:
Doug Hall, who is an engineer by profession, and began career in product development in Procter and Gamble, has devoted himself since leaving P&G to the study of innovation. He works with many of the most innovative companies, such as Disney and Nike and has developed a methodology around innovation. One of his discoveries has been the features that are common to successful innovative products.

He has found three characteristics of a product that are essential for success;
1. Overt benefits of the product - what does the customer get that matters to them?
2. Reason to believe - how can you prove that your promise for the product will deliver? (guarantees, testimonials, trials periods all help here)
3. Dramatic difference - how is your product in a different league to others with which it might be compared? Better still, if it creates a new league for itself.

All thee features above aree essential for a new product to be successful, but by far the most important is number 3 - dramatic difference!

Reference
Hall, D, (2001), Jump Start Your Business Brain, Betterway Books, Cincinnati OH

Criteria for Deciding on which Innovation to Fund: Week 3, Activity 4

I can understand that the Kaye & Hawkridge criteria helped them to select the case studies for a book on innovative elearning examples. However, in the innovation life cycle, the end product may be a way off yet. Johnson (2010) explains that the process of innovating is a continuous process of working in the "adjacent possible" - ideas that occur to you that are stimulated by the way things are now. Later he says "we take the ideas we've inherited or that we've stumbled across and we jigger them together into some new shape" (p 30) I would therefore be most concerned to make sure that potentially significant innovations that are not developed enough yet were not rejected too early.

The three criteria I am going to nominate are from the perspective of a project manager (like myself) in a private sector training company which is looking to make elearning a channel through which to develop new routes to market. At the moment this is relatively unchartered territory,

Cost will always be an issue and if the project is too expensive, it will not be afforded. Other criteria might help us work out which cost we should do well to find ways to afford. After all if the top line revenue generated by the programme can be increased, the cost becomes less of an issue.

The three criteria I would therefore nominate are:

1. New routes to market: is the programme appealing to and accessible by a wide audience of clients that would be new to our business? This might be judged by the number of students attracted so far, and the extent to which they are a new type of customer for the business.

2. Engagement of students: Our business prides itself on the impact that its f2f training interventions has on the performance of students back in the workplace. The degree of participation and excitement which it is possible to generate on and offline should therefore be a second criterion for deciding on the most worthy programme. Online participation monitoring and feedback from the workplace about any changes in behaviour/performance of students are at least two ways in which this criterion could be measured.

3. Customer Service: being able to monitor students progress, and then to personalise the programme to meet their learning needs and the needs that their business has of them will be an important way to differentiate our service in the market place. Programmes and technology that enable us to connect intimately with the learning progress of our students will therefore, again, be a differentiator in the market for the innovative programme. Activity in a VLE, and student responsiveness to new input could be methods of measuring against this criterion.



Madeleine


Reference:
Johnson, S (2010), Where Good Ideas Come From - A Natural History of Innovation, Allen Lane, London

Innovators and the "Chasm"

Moore's chasm model highlights the gap that exists between those who invent new products and the rest. The chasm analogy that he uses paints a graphic picture of the distance.

In my experience, it is not just the gap between innovator and the rest that is the challenge in a new product introduction. It is the singlemindedness that an innovator often requires to drive his/her idea through to fruition. This determination can make the innovator resistant to input from others, and therein lies a major weakness. For ideas to be adopted by many, the reservations of others must be dealt with by reaching over the chasm and finding ways to bridge the gap.

As for whether the chasm theory that might be relevant to elearning innovation, the fact that this is a consumer marketing model is a weakness. The audience for elearning innovation is threefold; the student, the teacher and the investor/institution. I am not convinced that these three constituents all act as consumers in deciding whether to adopt an elearning innovation.

However, the notion of the need to bridge the gap between innovation and potential users is an important one, and finding sponsors/supporters is essential.

Will a potential Innovation Fly? H807 3:2

Here are some concepts that may be useful as I consider introducing innovations to our Excellence Distance Learning Programme.

Relative Advantage: What problem is it that the innovation is required to solve, and do colleagues share my view of what we are seeking to improve? Whatever innovation I recommend must be seen by others to offer a benefit commensurate with the effort that will be required.

Compatibility: This is likely to be a major factor for my very experienced colleagues when faced with an elearning innovation. Their sense of self is connected strongly with their face to face practice, and the online arena is an uncomfortable fit for them. I think it will be important to introduce changes progressively, enabling colleagues to embrace the changes, and edging them gradually towards less compatible innovations. (ref H807)

Complexity: This must be considered both for teachers and learners.New skills and difficult concepts must be accommodated. With a disparate group of learners such as ours, complexity must be kept to a minimum. For teachers, I must be aware of new skills and structures they might require in order to be enthusiastic participants.

Trialability: Any experiments must not disadvantage the learners as we develop the programme pedagogy of our Excellence Distance Learning programme. Our version of Trialability is Quick Prototyping, and taking bite sized chunks upon which to experiment gives us access to feedback from both teachers and learners.

Observability: This takes us right back to relative advantage. We are measuring the success of our online efforts based on the extent to which learners are able to take and use what they have learned with their clients. Our current design requires learners to demonstrate what they have learned with their first client, and so far, a small proportion have taken the plunge (3 out of 15). It occurs to me that this may be too big a jump from theory into practice, and we might benefit for designing in an earlier opportunity to observe learners' progress.

Ref:
Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn), New York, Simon and Schuster.

Week One Reflections H807

In Block One of H07, we were encouraged to share our initial thoughts about innovation in elearning. There were several strands of discussion, one of which was 'what is the definition of innovation?'

I think we all agreed that innovation was about creating something new, but there were several debates 

1. Does a new idea/application have to be successful to qualify as an innovation?
2. Is a new use of a existing technology an innovation?
3. Can an application that is new to a person (although not new to the world) be counted as innovation?  

With my 'business' hat on, we tend to look on innovation is a very results oriented way; if an idea has no practical application, it tends to get dismissed out of turn. But as any successful innovator will tell you, it is the tries that don't work that get you to the point where you find a try that does work. So maybe the most helpful label would be to call an innovative idea that does not work an  'experiment' whereas the idea that does work gets the label of an innovation.

As for new uses of existing technology, that, in my mind is definitely an innovation. Technologies are simply tools, and finding new ways to use them opens up our understanding both of the subject being studied and of the potential of the tool. On both counts, that is definitely innovation.

If we take the definition of innovation as being to create new or to renew, the fact that an innovation is known to one group, does not mean in my mind that it is not innovative to a new audience. And as that new audience interacts with the innovation, they are very likely to create new meaning for themselves.

Without trying to summarise what I made of the activity, there are a number of points that have given me pause for thought.

The reference which Anita Houghton made to digital storytelling took me to an excellent paper. http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=120-1 The author, Nalin Sharda, pointed out that digital technologies give learners access to incredible amounts of information, but that making sense of that information was more tricky. Simply using the electronic media to present (even more!) information does not guarantee learning, never mind superior learning. His solution of engaging learners in reading and/or creating digital stories that force them to investigate a subject, and engage with the material is an innovation that enhances learning. Sounds good to me, although I'm sure it's harder than it sounds. Sharda sums up the pedagogical challenge of elearning as follows: "E-learning systems that just transform the traditional educational content (for example, books or lecture notes) into digital media are not successful; because, e-learning content that presents only facts and figures can loose the learners attention more easily than a good lecturer, who can capture the learners' attention with personal charisma. With e-learning content, the lack of personal connection (with a real teacher) can be overcome by creating "educational stories" that embody good storytelling principles."
Nicholas Keene drew attention to the difficulty of getting colleagues who were not schooled in ICT on board with innovations. "I could name 10 professors who were hostile the varying degrees to incorporating technolouyg more into their teaching forevery 1 who was in favour." Nicholas Keene Post 36 in reply to 23 • 11 February 2011, 00:10

It is very clear that there has been an explosion in the use of technology in learning in some academic circles. This however is not reflected in business. Although all my clients are electronically wired for producing their product/service, I don't see the innovation in using technology to the degree that seems present in some academic circles. Most business leaders see elearning as a way to deliver training more easily and many assume that this will mean it is cheaper. Grasping that elearning presents a pedagogical challenge is not on many non academic radars;-)

One last thought. Nicholas also found that "My first introduction to e-learning in an HE environment was chaotic. "Nicholas Keene Post 47 in reply to 44 • 13 February 2011, 01:39 This is a very typical response to a disruptive technology - we are suddenly presented with a brand new tool and working out how to use it is always going to be a bit messy.It would be nice to think that its introduction could be more orderly, but my sense is that the chaos creates learning, and it is only then that we can create order;-)