Innovation, creativity and competencies

Mary Stansbury, LIS Program Chair at University of Denver, gave a presentation at the annual membership meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA last night in south Denver. She talked, in part, about how we teach competencies in library school, and the role of innovation in competencies. It was an intriguing and thought-provoking presentation - and I will link to it when it becomes available.

The (admittedly somewhat scattered) notes that I'm sharing here reflect some of the thoughts she shared, and some of the thoughts and questions that came up for me during her presentation.

I will confess, there is a part of me that sighs - inwardly and tiredly - when I hear the words "innovation" and "competencies".

I think "innovation" is tremendously overused. Mary pointed out that in business these days, innovation is seen as the panacea that will cure all of our business/revenue/product/company/(insert word here) woes. I agree with this, and I think this contributes to my growing irritation with the word.

I feel that "competencies" is another word that, for me, is starting to attain "innovation" status. I'll talk about this more in a bit.

Mary began by distinguishing between innovation and invention. Innovation essentially means creative change of a process (rather than an object), while invention means creation of an object. She also noted that innovation includes elements of change and risk.

Mary posited that customers - library and information customers - might not always be the most reliable sources of knowing what innovation might look like. She quoted Henry Ford as saying, "if I'd asked my customers what they needed, they would have said, 'a faster horse'." While I think it's important to ask the recipients of our services what they need - mainly because we often fail to do this - this point gave me a different perspective on innovation. Yes, we can ask our customers what innovation might look like, but part of me feels it's a disservice to our customers to ask them for what they think is innovative - why should we put all of the burden on them?

One of the most intriguing pieces of her presentation was her reference to John Isaacson, who says that, when hiring, he looks for "hunger, speed and weight". Hunger means a willingness to take risks, and to fail. Speed means intellectual agility - the ability to listen and synthesize, and to learn. (To me, the ability to learn blows the needs for 90% of our written competencies out of the water. Feel free to argue with me.) Weight, as Isaacson puts it, is the ability to use power wisely, but I also feel there's a sense of emotional maturity in this piece.

I believe that these are valuable abilities for success. Part of the discussion of the evening was, does our focus on competencies support innovation? Often, our competencies are skill-based and retrospective - they address achievement, not aptitude. Achievement measures look backward; aptitude measures look forward. And to me, Isaacson's qualities are about aptitude.

Which brings us back to my irritation with the word "competencies". We talk a lot about competencies, but I think we are losing sight of the reasons behind competencies. As Mary pointed out, one of the benefits of having competencies is that they are measurable. And we have a very high need to measure, to gauge, to be able to point to something and say "There, you see? It is a 4.5 (or an A or X or Level E-3 or 86%)."

While competencies are important, I think the qualities that Isaacson outlines are equally important. Yet, how do you measure and codify risk tolerance? How do you codify capacity to learn? Maturity?

More importantly, is there a way to build these qualities into what we teach? Is there a way to teach not only skills but aptitude? Is there a way to create an environment - really, a scenario, a safe place to take risks - that builds both real skills experience and aptitude?

I think so. Though I'm not quite sure what that looks like yet. 

Comments

[Scott Brown]

Hi Esme - thanks for your comment. I didn't mean to imply that I felt speed was more important than the qualities of hunger or weight. I think all three are important elements - in combination with the appropriate skills!

Part of my comment about speed - the ability to learn - simply was pointing to the fact that many skills CAN be learned. Speed, weight and hunger are things that may be more difficult to acquire or cultivate - and, in some sense, are not things that we typically focus on teaching or cultivating.

[Esme]

I think I agree with you in part, that speed is more important, but the other two together are about equal in importance to speed. I would not want to hire a sales person who did not show hunger and weight as well as speed.