Leading Innovation in Arts and Culture

This week's topic is Industry/Sector Innovation Constraints. We are interested in understanding how the dynamics in a sector will facilitate or constrain innovation. We start with the story of Kodak's invention of the digital camera, trying to understand why they were unable to be successful at commercializing it. While there are some organizational innovation constraints that apply, we'll see that taking the perspective of economics and strategy, looking at competition constraints, supplier constraints, and market constraints, can provide a much more powerful analysis and explanation. We end with a brief overview of the "Disruptive Technology" (aka Innovator's Dilemma) work of C. Christensen, showing it's place within and consistency with the innovation constraints framework.

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.

This week takes the perspective on innovation of the scientist and engineer. This view holds that innovation is constrained by the laws of nature and our ability to manipulate them. It focuses on the physical limits we hit when we try to do things like improve acoustics, present light-sensitive artifacts in an engaging and immediate way, or bring together thousands of people in one place for a festival. We will develop a model of these "technological constraints" by understanding the roles of 1) our knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology, 2) the nature of time and sequencing, and 3) the natural environment and ecology that form the context for our innovation. The perspective is that innovation will fail when the proposed change does not function or functions in unanticipated ways.

Our final week takes on the problem of innovating as if it really mattered. We start with the story of Apollo 13, a life-or-death situation that required intense creative problem-solving, and consider the leadership behaviors that made successful innovation possible. Next, since our focus so far has been on improving our own ability to innovate, we discuss how to use the innovation constraint model to drive adoption by those people who are the targets of our change. We then revisit the question of process, and look at the role of the leader during each phase of a team's innovation journey. Moving to the organization-level of analysis we explore innovation portfolios and their ability to help us manage risk. Finally, by way of conclusion in the course, we talk about the nature of YOUR constraints and the ways that you can continue to identify them and find ways to work around them.