Last year I did some research in success factors for innovation in national libraries. In academic literature, I found some 42 enablers and obstacles for innovation that could be relevant to a public sector institute. Those factors were ‘field tested’ with my colleagues across Europe, both in the focus group and in separate interviews. In these slides the results are introduced:
After the focusgroup meeting I gave some more thought to the clustering of the factors that determine the capacity for innovation. I moved some of them around and also decided to divide them over five (instead of four) clusters that you will find here . The professionals and decision makers in the focusgroup also gave me some pretty good tips on the ranking procedure. Your ideas have all gone into the preparation for my next step: the structured interviews! I will not share them here just now, as I want these interviews to have an element of spontaneity. For the same reason I will not report on the very insightful comments the focusgroup gave on the propositions and the factors during the meeting. So please have some patience – hope to be able to share more within a few weeks. For now: all comments very welcome!
Yesterday, some 20 people, all closely involved with innovation in their libraries, met over lunch at the annual meeting of The European Library Promoting Innovation in Europe.
We were a bit squeezed in between other meetings, but managed an intense and fruitful discussion on the propositions I had prepared around innovation in libraries. See presentation . We also made a start with ranking determinant factors in order of priority but hardly got round to sharing good practice yet. Excellent group of people, am really grateful for their time and sharing of their critical thoughts. This is clearly to be continued!
Within a few days, I will provide a brief report on the outcomes of the workshop and provide some feedback facilities as well.
Intro Innovation Libraries TEL
Good audience this morning at European Library Meeting! surprisingly large show of hands when asked: which of the libraries present think they are really good at innovation AND improving delivery of Public Value at the same time. Now I am looking forward to the focus group during lunch today – my expectations of hearing REALLY good succes stories on enablers for innovation are now quite high….
This site has been set up to share best practice in national library innovation. Some pages to add your stories of success and failure will be added soon.
Library Innovation: Enablers and Obstacles 