I really like Christensen‘s Theory of Disruptive Innovation (as he proposed in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma). It succinctly describes the challenges, if not the fate, of academic libraries as we navigate through changing expectations and fast-moving, turbulent technologies. In fact, I often find that in explaining my point-of-view on where libraries need to go that I draw the core graph of Christensen’s theory on napkins, whiteboards, hands — whatever I can find. Inevitably, with the enthusiasm for the topic and quick-moving hands, the lines don’t always match where they ought and that makes the concepts all that more difficult to explain.

To solve the problem, I came up with a version the size of a business card that has not only the graph but also a brief explanation of the key points on the back that the victim, er…listener, can take away from the conversation. Thinking this might be useful to others as well, I’m offering the the graph supporting the Theory of Disruptive Innovation and the descriptive text as a PDF download suitable for printing onto Avery 8371 (or equivalent) business card stock.

The offer is made under the same Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license used by this blog. Contact me if you need copyright permissions outside that of this license. (Although, quite frankly, the only thing I can claim copyright on is the layout of the cards — that is something you could reproduce yourself with a little effort.) And if you want to read more about the potential impacts of Christensen’s theory on academic libraries and higher education in general, take a look at the Clayton Christensen category and the bibliography on DLTJ.

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.claytonchristensen.com/biography.html to http://www.claytonchristensen.com/bio.html on January 19th, 2011.

Tom Wilson, LITA past president and all-around insightful LITA Top Technology Trendster, posted a commentary to the “Where have all the programmers gone?” post that deserves top billing ¹. Please read and digest it before coming back here. And it’s not late to the party at all, Tom — I believe it is only now just getting interesting.

As you pointed out, my observations were not intended to denigrate the choices made by our elders. They stepped up and built complex systems that needed to be specialized to library data management tasks because there was nothing else around for them to use. And the complexity of those systems meant countless hours of library staff engaged with patrons to mediate their search requests (at first) and then to teach them how to use the interfaces (as the users became more sophisticated and the interfaces simpler). Now I would argue that at this point, roughly the late 80s and early 90s, the profession as a whole got locked into this “mediated-or-instruction-needed” mindset from which we have yet to recover. I am also drawing the correlation, perhaps incorrectly so, of the technology transfer that occurred during this time of talent from large research libraries to corporate entities that supply us with the automation systems we now rely on. Or, as you put it more eloquently at the start of this quotation:

It is not productive to fault our fore fathers/mothers in libraryland for what happened in this regard. BUT it laid a foundation of thinking that remains a huge burden today. That is: that all library applications are specialized.

It is in the second and third sentence that I think we agree: the mindset at the core of the profession right now that library applications are specialized applications is a huge burden impeding our progress. And while I’ll agree that there is a mindset in the profession that needs to change, I am not convinced that a) libraries (big and small) as organizations have the creative programming talent capacity now as individual entities to capitalize on any sea-change of foundational thinking of the profession; and b) libraries (big and small) as organizations cannot look to the existing “library automation” vendors as the primary providers of solutions in a newly reconstituted vision of “what is the library.”

Addressing the first point, with rare exceptions I don’t see institutions as organizations scaling up their technical staff to handle the raw building tasks of the kinds of services we’d like to see in a reconstituted vision of the library. I do see some evidence that progress is being made here and there, but there are no large programming shops being built to create the next ILS-equivalent. (Side note: I hereby apologize for the connotations created by the phrase “next ILS-equivalent” — that phrase makes sense to me on the surface but it causes deep shudderings in my bones.) I have come to believe, though, that tools and techniques from the open source world can be used to aggregate the capabilities resident in the distributed “libraryland” to share the risk and reward of the next ILS-equivalent (damn — I used it again). I wrote about that earlier in an open letter to adherents to Christensen’s philosophies called Aggregation of Risk in Pursuit of Disruptive Technologies (comments on that post are still welcome to as we move forward in Ohio with the concepts outline there). Also, a colleague from Ohio State and I co-authored an article for the SmartClassroom newsletter of Campus Technology about “betting your career” on open source that I think will have relevance here. The article is to be published on the 19th and I’ll post a copy on DLTJ after a seven-day embargo.

Addressing the second point, it is my assertion, under Christensen’s theories, that “library automation vendors” are not going to be the source of the disruptive innovation that we need. Like the library organizations themselves, they are caught up in the sustaining technology cycle that has lead us to the position we are in today. I would also assert that it is the libraries, not the vendors, that are on firmer footing to break the cycle for the the exact “ideal driven” reasons you cite. Or, to apply Christensen’s model, the vendor’s values/resources/processes triad will drive them harder to continue the sustaining technology cycle — more so than a library organization’s values/resources/processes triad that includes “ideal driven” components.

All-in-all, though, this is going to be an exciting thing to watch over the next couple of years. Hope to continue the conversation and the mutual education….

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.lita.org/ala/lita/litaresources/toptechtrends/toptechnology.htm on June 9th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. For those that have not yet encountered this idiom, “top billing” is a motion picture industry term that refers to actors whose names appear first in credits. They are usually in the principle performers and typically have the most screen time in the film. Read more in Wikipedia

I’ve moved the bibliography of the theory of disruptive innovation as applied to libraries and higher education to a new location. If you are reading this posting directly from the DLTJ website, you’ll also find it linked under the “about” header as “bibliography”.

The bibliography has also been updated to include the new (to me) paper mentioned on Monday and David Lewis’ presentation to the OhioLINK directors last week.

Somehow I completely missed this paper by Clayton Christensen, Sally Aaron, and William Clark from the EDUCAUSE 2001 Forum for the Future of Higher Education called, appropriately enough, “Disruption in Education.” Here is the abstract:

Clayton Christensen, Sally Aaron and William Clark, focus on the effects of disruptive technology that change competition in their field. Christensen’s theory, developed in the corporate realm, is based on the constant pursuit of excellence by both businesses and higher education institutions. As the quality of products increases, they often surpass the needs of their consumers, leaving a gap to be filled by a disruptive innovation (a product or service of lower quality or performance that more closely matches consumers’ needs). Other features make the innovation appealing as well, such as being cheaper, simpler, and more convenient to use. Early adopters of the disruptive technology or service most often are the least demanding customers in a market.

I’ve only skimmed it, but there is reference to the University of Pheonix so if you know anything about Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovations you can probably guess where this is going…

An open letter to Clayton Christensen as well as colleagues and practitioners of the theories of disruptive innovation:

State agencies in Ohio responsible for primary, secondary and higher education are coming together to share the risk of exploring disruptive technologies and to shepherd the adoption of successful technologies into the mainstream. We call this group “Collective Action”, and the model of disruptive innovations is a guiding element. On behalf of the Collective Action group, I am seeking wisdom and thoughts of potential pitfalls of this approach of aggregating risk capital in a loosely-coupled organization.

We take as given that each agency and educational institution can only take on so much risk when they look at the spectrum of technological possibilities. In doing so, it is the natural inclination to listen too closely to what the customers are saying and avoid possibilities on the disruptive end of the spectrum.

The vision and mission of Collective Action (excerpted below) is to aggregate the risk of each agency and institution in pursuit of truly disruptive innovations. We think our model has to stray somewhat from that of the business world because each of our parent organizations cannot afford to spin off separate development groups that can work under different business rules — the taxpayers would likely have a field day. Collectively pooled and with a long enough leash from our parent organizations, however, we believe that we can pursue actions along the theory of disruptive innovations.

Questions:

• Have others followeda similar model of aggregating risk from different organizations under common guiding principles? We may have something to learn from those that have tried this before.
• Based on research of organizational behavior and adoption of innovation, what would be the sort of “lessons learned” that we should seek in the experiences of participants asked to join the group?
• At a fundamental level, does this plan to aggregate risk within a semi-autonomous collective fit well with the disruptive innovation theories, and is there advice to be offered to help ensure its success?

A subset of the Collective Action group are making a presentation at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiatives summit later this month, at which we will be describing Collective Action within the framework of the disruptive innovation theories. During the session we will also offer a bibliography of materials related to the application of the theories within higher education. If you have suggestions for other resources, I would be most appreciative to hear about them.

Thank you to you, Michael Raynor, Scott Anthony, and Erik Roth for your efforts to clearly articulate your work and blazing a path for us to follow.

Sincerely,

Peter Murray

COLLECTIVE ACTION VISION: Creation of a continuum of quality education and training for Ohioans through the establishment of innovative learning technologies and strategies for their use in Ohio K-20 educational institutions.

COLLECTIVE ACTION MISSION: To foster innovation in education and training through the sharing of risk and resources needed to invoke change. “Collective Action” refers to the investment of “risk capital” in a multi-institutional collaboration by agencies and institutions of the Ohio Board of Regents, the Ohio Department of Education, and Ohio-based institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education. These professionals with the pooled resources of their organizations will explore disruptive learning technologies and learning practices with potential to transform K-20 education and training.

This paragraph was at the very end of an interview with Antonio Perez, CEO of Eastman Kodak on page 46 of the January 16th issue of Newsweek.

What lessons can you share about running a company whose core business goes into irreversible decline?
Communications and honesty. I get a lot of people coming into my office to say goodbye because they are losing their job with Kodak. And they say, “I think what you are doing is the right thing.” It’s very hard in a lot of ways. But if you do it with honesty and a lot of communication, if you are generous — and we have been — that’s all you can do. There’s an enormous capability to understanding by any human being if you talk to and listen to the person. But so far I feel very happy with the reaction of every single employee of Kodak. These are not easy times.

I’m putting this in the “Clayton Christensen” category (perhaps I should rename the category?) not because it is something Christensen would say, but rather something that is in line with his model of addressing disruptive innovations.

Are academic libraries in an “irreversible decline”? Irreversible goes too far — we have not yet seen the precipitous drop in use like Kodak has seen in its analog film line of business — but our patrons seem to be using our traditional services less and less. So I wonder if the CEO of Kodak has anything to teach us…

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10755434/site/newsweek/.

Over the course of 2005 I’ve become more attuned with Clayton Christensen’s model of Disruptive Technology and how it explains events shaping academic libraries (and other types of libraries, for that matter) and higher education in general. Below is the bibliography I’ve collected on this topic
to this point.
If you’re just starting in this area, I’d recommend a top-down reading. (Unless you want to start with the 2-hour audio book version of Christensen’s first work. That is how I started and I found it to be a remarkably gentle yet powerful introduction to his concepts.)

If you find anything else along these lines, please let me know — I’d
like to keep growing this bibliography.

Lafferty, Susana; Edwards, Jenny. Disruptive technologies: what future universities and their libraries? Library Management 25(6-7): 252-258. 2004. Available online through OhioLINK’s link resolver.
Sustaining and Disruptive technologies from a higher-education
holistic view as well as academic libraries.

Lewis, David W. “The Innovator’s Dilemma”: Disruptive Change and Academic Libraries. Library Administration & Management 18(2):68-74. Spring 2004. Available online at https://idea.iupui.edu/handle/1805/173
Focused on academic libraries.

Christensen, Clayton. Improving Higher Education through Disruption. Forum Futures 2002. Available online at http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0201s.pdf
In Christensen’s own words — take care if forwarding this to deans
of business schools.

Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma. HarperBusiness Essentials (1998, 2000). ISBN: 0060521996. http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/0060521996

Christensen, Clayton M. and Michael E. Raynor. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Harvard Business School Press (September 2003). ISBN: 1578518520. http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/1578518520

Christensen, Clayton M., Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth. Seeing What’s Next : Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. Harvard Business School Press (2004). ISBN: 1591391857. http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/1591391857

Christensen CM, Cook S, Hall T. Marketing malpractice – The cause and the cure. Harvard Business Review 83(12): 74-83. Dec 2005. Available online through the OhioLINK link resolver.

Anderson, Kent R. From Paper to Electron: How an STM Journal Can Survive the Disruptive Technology of the Internet. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 7(3): 234-245. May-Jun 2000. Available online at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=61426

I haven’t yet gotten around to writing the blog entry about why Clayton Christensen’s work is important, but this citation was too good to let go by. How can we apply this? How about: “People don’t want an article citation for their research topic — they want an article on their research topic.” So why do we inflict confusing, jargon-filled and content-thin interfaces on our uses? So we can drive them to a bibliographic instruction session? I think we’ll drive them away.

Title: Marketing malpractice – The cause and the cure
Author(s): Christensen CM, Cook S, Hall T
Source: HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 83 (12): 74-+ DEC 2005
Abstract:
Ted Levitt used to tell his Harvard Business School students, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill – they want a quarter-inch hole.” But 35 years later, marketers re still thinking in terms of products and ever-finer demographic segments.

The structure of a market, as seen from customers ‘point of view, is very simple. When people need to get a job done, they hire a product or service to do it for them. The marketer’s task is to understand what jobs periodically arise in customers’ lives for which they might hire products company could make.