Tag: education

  • Lessons from Boise: What colleges can teach us about fostering innovation

    Lessons from Boise: What colleges can teach us about fostering innovation

    A wheel design to eliminate road ruts for American farmers. A new reseller model bringing internet access to villages in rural Mexico. A radar device that allows first responders and military to see through walls before entering a building. These are just a few of the pitches from teams competing in the Idaho Entrepreneurship Challenge held at Boise State College of Innovation & Design. 63 talented students on 24 teams from five Idaho colleges participated in the final round, and met up with judges with deep and varied experience in tech innovation and product leadership.

    Students are natural idea generators. Exposed to new concepts, people, and settings, students are in a learning mindset and readily apply their minds to solving problems on campus, locally, and even globally. But how can campuses build on this natural inclination to help students take their ideas a step further? It takes work to create and nurture a culture that fosters student entrepreneurship, whether that’s toward commercial or social good. Reflecting on the entrepreneurship challenge in Boise, as well as my experience at Harvard University and Junior Achievement, I’ve observed consistent patterns — patterns that apply to corporate campuses as well as college ones.

    Build on the learning mindset — not just the educational one. Students attending university have been focused on concrete, measurable outcomes: final grades and university acceptances. And these milestones matter. But as entrepreneurs, students will find out that most ideas fail, and that learning to fail quickly, adapt their approach based on these mistakes, and start again with improved information is critical. As one young mechanical engineer explained to me, “We know how not to build it one million times. And we’re getting closer each time.” To encourage this thinking, campuses are developing labs settings, like Harvard’s Innovation Labs, and bringing in professors of practice to offer applied guidance. Sometimes these initiatives come with credit hours or other academic benefit.

    Organizations as diverse as Fidelity Investments and the New York Public Library are also adopting this tactic. While lean startup is a well-known principle in parts of the working world, to paraphrase William Gibson, this future is still not evenly distributed. Done right, a labs environment can provide a pathway to a new kind of learning. A critical part of this learning stems from transparency: organizations used to sweeping failed projects under the rug are now sharing them via processes like blameless post-mortems to capture lessons and encourage experimentation. Popular new books like Radical Candor and Principles emphasize the benefits of rapid and transparent feedback as a driver of a growth mindset.

    Green Mind demo. Photo credit Madison Park, Boise State University

    Encourage entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to start with what they know. The media covers innovation in selective ways: the latest dating app is going to get a lot more airtime than a transformative technology in the construction industry. But don’t let that drive you to chase the next media-friendly tool and dismiss the power of what you know. Pitches that stood out in Boise included phrases like, “Because I grew up on a farm, I know that …” and “As a father of six children under twelve, I identified the need …”

    How can this extend to your organization? Mine employee creativity with hackathons or challenges addressing topics specific to your organization or industry. And don’t let top-down lead: work with employees tackling these problems head on to generate that list of topics.

    Enable and reward cross-disciplinary learning. Media interest in formalized online learning, or “peak MOOC,” occurred in about 2012, and with it the mandate that everyone must learn to code. Today, the interpretation is more nuanced: Quantitative literacy and understanding how software works are vital skills, but not everyone will become a software developer. There’s a renewed appreciation for the liberal arts, especially now as we are confronted by the repercussions of our rapid transformation to a tech-enabled society. On campuses, academic leaders are facilitating multidisciplinary study through curriculum reform, and entrepreneurship centers are making a concerted effort to bring together students across disciplines to solve problems.

    Similarly, training across an organization can encourage horizontal thinking — employees prepared to tackle challenges in new ways, and think across silos. A product leadership approach can unite teams with different skill sets, limiting the Balkanization of disciplines like design and engineering. And organizations are increasingly supportive of all kinds of learning: a successful entrepreneur in the not-for-profit education industry once shared with me that when his organization was growing, it took him a while to understand why offering tuition reimbursement for French classes might matter to his SaaS business. In the end he concluded that these courses were well worth the investment — he reaped the reward of engaged employees in a more creative, learning mindset.

    Set the stage for formal and informal mentor networks. Formal networks are offered by many career services departments: students should not overlook the ability to trade on alumni loyalty for a conversation. But in a hyper-networked world, formal programs should not prevent students from reaching out directly to someone they admire, whether that’s a recent grad or an established leader. As fellow judge Peter Boyce observed, there’s tremendous power in a carefully crafted message sent from an .edu email address — an otherwise overcommitted exec will sometimes make time for students.

    Organizations can provide formal mentor pairings or brown-bag lunches, and reverse-mentoring programs around digital capabilities encourage bi-directional learning. But there’s also benefit in teaching employees how to build their informal networks, to reach out beyond organizational walls to experts and colleagues within and beyond their industry.

    Lumineye demo. Photo credit: Madison Park, Boise State University

    Recognize that entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. We all know what a smart tech entrepreneur looks like, right? Hollywood and innumerable stock art images have taught us that it’s a young white guy in a hoodie, usually writing an inscrutable formula on a piece of glass. Great ideas don’t discriminate, so encourage others who may be dissuaded from the conversation based on that image to up your organization’s innovation IQ. In an academic or a workplace setting, providing coaching on how to tell your story about your idea is invaluable. I’ve seen both pull and push initiatives work: for the former, providing data-driven evidence on the performance of diverse teams; for the latter, consider what your organization’s version of an inclusion rider might be.

    Gordon Jones, the dean of the Boise State College of Innovation & Design and founding managing director of the Harvard Innovation Lab, convened the Idaho entrepreneurship challenge. Several times, Jones referenced “blue turf thinking” — a term associated with the creativity of the Boise State athletics department, home of the famous blue turf. I’d argue that the term is also useful in framing innovation efforts more broadly: successful innovation is about both thinking different and staying true to your roots.

    We’re in an environment where we all need to keep learning — agility and adaptation are the critical skills needed for 21st century knowledge workers. As education expands from episodic and location-based to lifelong and virtual, we need to value both sustained scholarship and lean learning approaches. Learning cultures enabling creative execution through transparency and cross-boundary thinking are the new competitive advantage.

    Originally published April 1, 2018 on Medium.

  • Digital goes horizontal: challenges in the cultural sector

    Digital goes horizontal: challenges in the cultural sector

    Loic Tallon, Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, makes a compelling case that digital is a horizontal function — a collective responsibility that transcends the work of any single, dedicated department. While a digital department can serve a purpose — as umbrella or at times a bunker for those charged with stewarding net new digital projects or institution-wide initiatives — the responsibility for digital transformation is shared with leadership and the many strategic and operational departments. My work in educational and cultural institutions puts me in violent agreement with these observations; the more digital can be shrugged off or delegated to a single team, the less success the enterprise will have with genuine transformation.

    Loic refers to the Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” which I interpret as all the fancy PowerPoint decks in the world won’t save you if you’ve failed to bring the lifeblood of an institution — its people — along in a substantive and not superficial way. In my experience, the biggest misstep institutions make while embarking on digital transformation is excessive focus on technology. Choosing the right platform and application stack is important, but far more initiatives have failed from underinvestment in people. And that’s not recruiting in digital rockstars or social media gurus — instead, it’s equipping people in your own organization everywhere from procurement to fundraising. Digital transformation is not an obvious or overnight journey; it requires significant investment in education for people at every level. And creating a cultural expectation of constant learning is a practice that will serve not only the institution but all its staff well.

    Secondly, the role of leadership can’t be overstated. Explicit and implicit support for digital initiatives has to be signaled, and best way to do this is optimizing for a return on failure. Any organization claiming a 100% digital initiative success rate is either a operating from a playbook a decade behind or burying the bodies. Leadership that encourages smart experimentation and embraces “fail forward” thinking will show the organization both their determination and their support. The resulting attitudinal shift will end up being as or more important as the enterprise obsession with formulating the right org chart.

    Finally, I’d add a sixth question for all cultural organizations to ask as they consider how to move forward with digital: how will engagement with external constituents continuously inform strategy? We live in an era of declining trust in all institutions, including higher education and the cultural sector. What are the ways institutions will empower employees to engage externally substantively and broadly? What quantitative and qualitative mechanisms can be put in place to derive insights in to inform progress?

    The challenges for facilitating true digital advancement across an educational or cultural institution are enormous, and Loic’s thoughtful analysis identifies seminal issues to be tackled along the way. As these institutions fight for relevance in an attention economy against a backdrop of an increasingly distrustful environment, taking digital horizontal is a C-suite imperative.

    Image credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick

  • Friday 5 — 9.23.2016

    Friday 5 — 9.23.2016

    1. As we perform more of our work collaboratively online — suddenly, nothing seems as antiquated as a corporate “shared drive” — there’s a lot of value in knowing the range of features available. These 18 Google docs tips, like the ability to search images by color, can help you keep up with recent improvements.
    2. Is a data scientist essential for a modern design team? This article argues that developing data literacy through three habits — checking source and context; being numerate; watching your biases — can be a good substitute.
    3. How do you get explosive growth for your digital product? Josh Eman outlines five types of virality that can do the trick.
    4. Allo, Google’s new, IA-enhanced messaging app, launched with mixed reviews: it’s fine, or maybe it’s more like your annoying office intern. Edward Snowden says we shouldn’t use it.
    5. It’s one thing to claim you have skills on your LinkedIn profile, and have a couple of colleagues endorse you. It’s entirely another to have those skills tested and validated for potential employers. LinkedIn has revealed the learning program made possible by its Lynda.com acquisition, with consumer plans available for $29.99/month.

    Weekend fun: First the robots took our factory jobs, and now they’re coming for the songwriters. Listen to “Daddy’s Car,” a song in the style of the Beatles composed by artificial intelligence, with arrangement and lyrics by an actual human.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Sign up for a weekly email.

  • Friday 5 — 5.20.2016

    Friday 5 — 5.20.2016

     

    1. Bots won’t replace apps, better apps will. Read the entire post for insights on the limitations of the conversational user interface, including too many taps and lingering skeuomorphism in chat interaction design.
    2. 85% of Facebook video is watched without sound, which is why you’ll find savvy organizations posting videos like thisthis, or this — all tell a compelling story with the audio off.
    3. Can you learn UX in a one-week course? Unlikely, according to this post summarizing the missteps in education for user experience designers.  Don’t miss the embedded link to useful books, blogs, and podcasts geared toward aspiring and learning UX designers.
    4. Part of the challenge faced by IDEO designers is helping their client companies accept change. This HBR post describes transformative empathy, co-design, and shared vision as three core tools in their arsenal.
    5. Product managers juggle a wide range of tasks — from plotting the course to managing tactical features and functions. Product Hunt picked 9 useful apps for a product manager’s toolkit.

    Weekend fun: There’s definitive proof that low-tech can be fun in this week’s agency post-it wars. Set phasers to stun: Nerd alert. News you can use: universities seeking new titles with just a soupçon of bureaucratic bloat should try this handy title generator.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

  • Friday 5 — 3.25.2016

    Friday 5 — 3.25.2016

    1. Scott Brinker has released the 2016 marketing technology landscape diagram, mapping  3,874 solutions into six capability categories (shows above). The slide shows that “one platform to rule them all” has not yet emerged — middleware is enabling greater integration among them.
    2. When building a digital product, it’s easy for teams from marketing to development to get atomized and hyper-focused on local goals. This chapter from The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products that People Love offers guidance on storymapping tactics to get everyone aligned, and to achieve a great end result.
    3. A new Pew report explores U.S. adults habits around personal and professional lifelong learning. How lifelong learning correlates with educational attainment and household income was not surprising. But 80% of adults having “not much awareness” of MOOCs was higher than I might have imagined.
    4. Losing your phone is more than an inconvenience — it’s a potential security disaster. Ashley Carman shares lessons learned in her Mexican phone theft nightmare, as well as specific tips for us all. (#1 – Use a password manager.)
    5. If you were working in tech in the Internet 1.0 era, you probably know that the pornography industry was instrumental in driving the video serving technology  that made all video online possible. This week PornHub launched a new virtual reality (VR) channel to spur adoption, which will presumably in turn drive demand for more robust and lower cost VR infrastructure.

    Weekend fun: In tamer video news, four sets of identical twins played a time travel prank on a New York subway. Mildly related: XKCD serves up the perils of estimating time.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

  • 7 opportunities for digital in educational travel

    7 opportunities for digital in educational travel

    There’s a lot going on at the intersection — some might even say collision — of mobile, social, digital revolution and the travel industry. Last week I presented at the Educational Travel Community summarizing current and emerging challenges, and offering seven digital opportunities to pursue.

  • How class, poverty, and higher ed connect

    The story of their lost footing is also the story of something larger — the growing role that education plays in preserving class divisions. Poor students have long trailed affluent peers in school performance, but from grade-school tests to college completion, the gaps are growing. With school success and earning prospects ever more entwined, the consequences carry far: education, a force meant to erode class barriers, appears to be fortifying them.

    Disheartening and thoughtful piece in the New York Times on the complex interrelationships of poverty, class, and family ties, and how these all affect higher eduation achievement among low-income students.

  • The Tempest, digital humanities edition

    We didn’t want this to be the authoritative version of the play to be admired or read in solitude; we want it to be a generative version of the play, one which sparks innovation and creates new knowledge.

    – Prof Elliot Visconsi, talking about his new iPad app supporting a social reading and learning experience of The Tempest