Developed by David Owens at Vanderbilt University and customized for the cultural sector with National Arts Strategies, this course is designed to help arts and culture leaders create an environment where new ideas are constantly created, shared, evaluated and the best ones are successfully put to work. One of the toughest challenges for any leader is getting traction for new ideas. Winning support can be a struggle. As a result, powerful new ideas often get stuck. This is especially true in the cultural sector. People involved in arts and culture often have little time and even less money for experimentation and risks. This course will help those in the performing arts, museums, zoos, libraries and other cultural organizations build environments where new management and program ideas flourish. Leading Innovation in Arts & Culture will teach you how to make an "innovation strategy" a fundamental component of your organization's overall strategy. In this seminar you will learn to: - Analyze constraints on innovation in your organization, foresee obstacles and opportunities, and develop a shared vision - Develop a process to manage the demands of multiple stakeholders, shifting priorities and the uncertainty inherent in new initiatives - Create a culture for innovation and risk-taking that generates new perspectives and challenges existing practice - Create a strong customer focus within your organization that anticipates customer needs National Arts Strategies worked with David Owens to customize this course for those working in the cultural sector. They based their work on David Owens’ Leading Strategic Innovation in Organizations course. This highly interactive 8-week course will engage you in a series of class discussions and exercises.
L6-Part 4 Values & Identity B
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From the course by Vanderbilt University
Leading Innovation in Arts and Culture
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From the lesson
Societal Constraints
This week's session explores the perspective of the sociologist and anthropologist. People who adopt this view argue that innovation is likely to be constrained by (1) the views that a society holds of itself, (2) how it enforces those views, and (3) the history by which it came to hold and share those views. In more basic terms, this view suggests that innovation will fail when a society does not see how a proposition for change can make it become more of what it wants to be. Society will oppose changes that are antithetical to the ideals that it holds for itself. This constraint should feel familiar to arts and culture, where so much work challenges how we as individuals, groups and societies see and understand ourselves and our world.
As in other sessions, in addition to the watching the lectures, you are asked to do the diagnostic survey and reflection essay, and participate in the forum discussions. As an additional exercise (All Students), this week will also require you to analyze a case study.
Meet the Instructors
David A. Owens, PhD, PEProfessor
Practice of Management and Innovation
Jim RosenbergIndependent Consultant and Senior Advisor at NAS
[SOUND].
Personal identity is only talk little bit about personal identity and where that
comes from. And how that plays into innovation
constrains. You know so who I am.
And how am I. We're going talk a little bit about, you
know, the things and what they say about me.
So how do I assert my identity in the society, and how people look at me?
I'm going to talk about what we consider things to be socially acceptable or not.
And also we may have to give up things. Like might adapting an innovation,
changing myself, changing my life around, some innovation that you propose, am I
give that up and how does that work. My social identity is defined from lots
of places, right. Defined from the inside so I think of
myself as David Owens and I think there's an I in there but also I'm defined by
these things outside. I'm a mentor, I'm a friend, I'm a
coworker, I'm a husband, I'm a son, I'm a father, all these things act part of who
I am and how I understand myself. So sometimes when we look at ourselves
we're trying to say, you know, is that us or the things we're projecting?
Are they actually part of our identity? Are they meaningful parts of our
identity? And so when we look at other thing, we
take other things, when we Project ourselves with the material culture, with
the things that we live our lives with, we can say you know, this is who I am.
And society will look at us and say, well, you know, is that cool or is that
dorky? You know, are you, is you, are you, is
this thing worthy of driving at the front of a parade, or is this something we, you
know, stigmatize by you know, this is something the, the overweight middle-aged
mall cops drive. And so, is it cool or is it dorky?
And these are questions that we ask ourselves when we're about to adopt
things inside, or about to bring innovations into our lives and, and use
them to, to express ourselves, to, to basically to create our identities
outside. Especially something like this Segway
that is actually a A big device, we use it outside, we use it in a place where
others can see us. It certainly does say a lot about us when
we use one of these devices. Another question is do I have to change?
You know if I, do I have to give something up in order to change?
I had an interesting discussion one time with a person, she was a court reporter.
And what she would do is during a trial, the stenographers, they have a little
machine. And they basically type up everything
that's said in the court reporting. And, you know, here's an example of one.
Here's a, a a, a person in the Marine Corps.
She's very fast. If you think of it, that's 225 words a
minute. That is very fast to be able to do with
this machine. However, and this is not the woman I was
talking to; I was talking to a different person.
This person I was talking to was saying you know, was how terrible it was that
there is this new technology coming in, and they just put cameras everywhere and
they record everything, and they do this offshore transcription or they do machine
transcription. It's terrible.
I said well why is that? Because you're going to lose your job?
Because you know, things have to get better.
It's probably cheaper for the courts, it reduces some of the back log of cases, it
is more accurate, it, you know, has all these benefits.
Well she said to me you don't get it, you don't understand.
What's happening is there taking away something or changing something about our
legal system. Stenographers are there to preserve
justice. The reason we're there is we're helping
the courts operate in a fair and just way.
What's happening is they're subverting you know, justice.
This is the American way. They're not, it wasn't about some
technology. For her, it really was about this is how
we administer justice in our country, and that's what you're changing.
And so think about how people are Interpreting your change.
So the proposition for change is hey, let's just make this a little more
efficient. For her, it was, wow, we're subverting
the legal system. And that's really a big difference.
And she's really going to put up a big barrier, if she perceives it as we're
subverting the legal system. And if she convinces a lot of other
people that we are, they're going to be as convinced as well.
So, beyond personal identity, we then have to talk about conflicting values,
and sometimes there are two values and we're just caught in the middle, we're
just not really sure which way to go. we may, it may be that people are outside
of us, that the people are trying to draw is in one way or draw us in another way,
or maybe that's something inside. So for example, if you grow up in coal
country, a place where lots of coal is mined, and coal is used for power.
And for generations your family has been reliant on that as a source of income, is
as a source of work, is a source of meaning, is a source of being someone in
the world. And there's a big proposal for saying
some some wing towers. Even though you may know it's better, and
good for the environment, better than coal or mining, you may still not be
completely happy about that or be accepting of that because of what it
represents. It represents conflict.
Something of what you know you are, and something of your heritage, and something
of your history versus something that's good for the world now.
And you're not sure which way to go, and so these kind of conflicting values may
cause people to say no, even though the innovation may be better in the long run.
Better is a relative term here. So how do we overcome these social value
constraints? What are the things that we can do to get
past them? Well one thing we can do is to let our
values guide us, right, so we have to account for all possible values.
We're going to think like an anthropologist.
Now anthropologists say, why do those people think that way?
What is it in their behavior? What is it in their material culture?
What is it in the things that they have around them that I can use to understand
what they valued and what they don't value?
And of, let me force myself to look at alternative ways of looking at, and
seeing, the proposition for change that I'm making.
So I propose an innovation, I need to understand how are other people going to
look at that thing. Now what are the paths that I can take
and how do I understand what the implications are for other people of
those paths. How do I get other stakeholders involved?
How do I not isolate myself where I don't understand or I can't get access to or I
close myself off from other people. People who have a true honest vested
interest in the project or in the innovation.
How do I get their views about it? How do I let them say what they need to
say about it? Because if I ignore them, or if I don't,
I'm very likely to go down a wrong path instead of I make something that, that
doesn't meet their value, or even, as worst as against their values than
something that does. We're going to see an example later of
the segue where this kind of problem happened where something was designed in
a vacuum without going out to society and say, hey, it's something meaningful.
And as a result suffered a great deal of failure from that.
Also building prototypes. Building prototypes is something that you
can do. You can build these models, these, these
quick, dirty, cheap, fast ways of gathering information about the
proposition for change that you are making from people, and when you give
them to people and let people interact with them, watch for the weak signals.
People can't often articulate... That something is effecting them, you
know, this real deep value level. Like the court report I was telling you
about. But certainly you can, sort of begin to
see, for people who, who are less in touch with their, you know, feelings
about something. You can certainly begin to see the kind
of, the leakage or way that their body language even, responds to this.
And this helps us see that this direction we're going may actually may be, or may
not be acceptable to people. Finally, I have this one I call, how many
dorks? And, and this is the problem of
innovating for yourself. And I see again and again how people,
maybe it's one person, maybe it's a couple of people, but they think of the
world as like them and they want the world to be like them.
so maybe it's a, it's a charitable way of saying, like, I'm normal, that to have a
lot of people like me, but they design the thing for themselves.
And sometimes that work but often doesn't work when you do the innovation for
yourself. Because maybe there's not that many dorks
like you around there. And so if you, hoovering this proposition
for change, and people say like, why on earth, like why would I want that, why
would I want to look like that, why would I want to carry that thing with me?
That becomes problematic. And so again try to understand, who does
this thing appeal to, and why does it appeal to them?
Don't just assume because you value it, that other people will value as well.
And so, again let you val, values guide you, get stakeholders involved, build
prototypes, whenever and however you can, fast, dirty, cheap.
And also don't rely on just coup, sort of a few dorks that surround you.
But if you're going to have a change that actually makes a big difference in the
world. Make sure that lots of people are bought
into the idea that your proposing. Another thing you can do is, is use the
old Mark, Mark, Groucho Marx joke join a club that won't have you as a member, and
one thing is that I'll give you a quick example.
I did some research with a good friend Damon Phillips.
We looked at the early phonograph industry.
And what a question was in the 1920's as jazz was coming alive as a new art form,
a recorded art form. the question was do big record companies,
or was it small record companies that were the first to basically to benefit
this or innovate this early art form. So again if you are big company you have
lots of resources, the maybe could have lots of people on the ground offer good
recording contracts to early jazz musicians, but if you're a small company,
maybe you are on the ground are sitting in more cafés and you're closer to it so
which one of those would be better at popularizing jazz?
Well, it turned out that the big organizations refused to record jazz, in
fact. And what the problem was is that the big
companies, there were a num, usually, it's the chief executives and the boards
of those companies, they had interlocking directorates, and so I would be a CEO of
a company, I would sit on your board, and you would sit on my board and all that,
that kind of thing is illegal today but in those days it was still, happening.
They basically would look and sit around and look at each other, I assume and say
well, you're not going to play that jazz stuff are you?
No, I'm not going to record it. You're going to record it?
No, I'm not going to record it. And so they're all looking at each other
saying we're not going to record this stuff.
And so they basically refused to record jazz.
Why? Well, because jazz was It, the, the thing
about the social context in the 20s in the United States was a time all the
libraries were founded. So there were lots of public library
system came into being. Lots of people were buying art from
Europe. the United States was in sort of a low
self-esteem mode at that time. And really wanted to sort of project
itself as having a culture. That we are actually meaningful.
That we have a, a place in the world. That we are a country to be dealt, be
reckoned with. And the problem with jazz was that jazz
was not legitimate. They didn't use music.
Jazz was not written down. People were playing it from memory.
They just played different every time. Jazz was not, it was always done by
blacks, and blacks were not, you know, of status in that country.
It was also played in places where people drank alcohol, and 20's was a time of
prohibition. And so it had lots and lots of social
stigma with it and so these companies wanted to avoid being associated with
jazz. However in the end what happened was
these jazz became very popular and in fact some of the companies actually hired
white musicians to play in a jazz but they put them in jazz orchestras.
And so there's an orchestra, a Paul White Orchestra in the 1920's.
Those were making a million dollars a year which in the 1920s was a lot of
money. Million dollars a year touring with the
jazz orchestra. It was all white, they all had.
They used music stands, and some, I understand that music stands didn't even
necessarily have music in them. Because they were playing jazz, and that,
having that was an important symbol to people that in fact, we are proper, we
are, this is real music. This is something we do.
And the kind of dancing was much more gentile, the kind of dancing that was
done, vesurs the real live. Down-to-earth jazz places.
In the end, what we figured out was that the big companies just played the waiting
game, they waited until the small companies went out of business, and then
bought up the catalogs. And so the small companies would find the
super-talented people and do their first record, or first second, or first record.
And then the big companies would buy them out, after they went bankrupt, or after
they did not survive. I'm through, and what we found in the end
was that the big companies ended up playing a waiting game and waited until
Jazz became much more acceptable and then began to buy out the catalogs of these
small companies that didn't have the resources often were out, were bankrupt
or out of business, and didn't have the resources to keep going on.
And so the big companies benefitted in the end from that.
So the big companies were not the innovators in the sense, of, of finding
a, the defense, of creating upload, they were the exploiters of the innovation
that had occurred before. We can think about the music industry,
the current music industry as so similarly.
That they were, sort of, avoided digitizing, in the, in the same way.
They were avoiding conflicts with the artist, they didn't want to have that.
That kind of social ties. Hackers were the enemy there, these
people outside. So they sort of rounded up and they said
all together, we're not going to let them happen.
And so the innovation did not occur inside as we talked about last week about
disruptive technologies because they let it happen outside.
Remember, these hackers were doing it, they were low end customers, they were
not interested in this thing and our social ties were the things that kept us
from. Responding in a way stepping out of the
club of that we're a member of and actually addressing the innovation, the
change, the call to change in a meaningful way.
Another thing we can do is to do with your change.
If you do something good, tell people. Right?
Put the word out there, hey, we're doing this thing that's wonderful, we're doing
this thing that's good for people, here's why we think it's wonderful.
And I think if you do that, alot of times that, we're, we're afraid, we don't
want to draw attention on ourselves, we don't want to say, hey, I have values, I
think I'm trying to do something good. Not sure why, but, but organizations,
especially, suffer from that, from not wanting to do that.
But if you tell people these are the things we're doing, these are the goods
things we're doing, this is why we're doing them, I think it's a good thing.
Not to tell them to advertising. It's not about this is an advertising
ploy. But really is to be clear.
These are the things we are doing. This is why we think it's a good thing
for us to do. A benefit is that you can get people to
trust you. So that in future innovations.
They may allow you a little bit more lead way when it comes time to justify the
Legitimize the innovation that you're proposing.
So, the social identity issues we're thinking about, what does it say about
me? That's something to be grappled with.
It's not to overcome, there's no way to overcome the, the fact that the things
that you live with say something about you.
But certainly is worth considering. Is it socially acceptable, to what extent
does adopting you product or adopting your innovation make people, give people
social stigma, or make them more socially desirable.
And then, also, thinking about what're people giving up.
If you make this proposition for change, does it require people to leave something
behind, and what is the value of that thing they're leaving behind?
Is it so important to them that it's problematic, or is it something that they
are happy enough to leave behind? And these are the kind of things we need
to think about when we're trying to overcome these problems of social values
and social identity.
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