Supporting Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Janet Crum, Samantha Schmehl Hines, Janet Crum, Samantha Schmehl Hines

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781789732061
• eBook ISBN: 9781789732078
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Libraries have recently begun doing more to support entrepreneurship and innovation within their communities. Makerspaces and business incubators have become featured attractions in public and academic libraries and provide a unique way to reach out to a user group that can bolster a community in dynamic ways. In this volume of Advances in Library Administration and Organization, we delve beyond examples and case studies to look at how library leaders can develop support for innovation and entrepreneurship within their libraries and within the profession. 

Chapters include examinations of design thinking and space planning, staffing, mission statements, and makerspaces. The contributors to this volume cover libraries and their activities in North America, Europe and Africa, and also discuss professional development in entrepreneurship topics as well as support of innovation. Libraries are increasing support of entrepreneurship and innovation across the board, and this volume will position administrators and managers of libraries to better understand what's happening, and how to bring it into their own institutions.

PART 1
TOOLS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AND INNOVATION

NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED: IMPLEMENTING DESIGN THINKING AS A LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

Michelle Boisvenue-Fox and Kristin Meyer

ABSTRACT

Changing user needs have created new opportunities for libraries, requiring evolving leadership practices that support innovation and rapid change. Design thinking can provide leaders with a concrete process to move toward action. The authors – one an executive administrator at a large, multi-branch public library, the other an academic librarian who leads a small team – share how design thinking has positively influenced their leadership practices. The benefits of implementing this flexible process have included improved user experience, more creative solutions, wise investments, staff empowerment, increased transparency and trust, and employee learning and development. Both leaders experienced these benefits even though they are in different positions on their hierarchical organization charts. The authors propose that implementing design thinking as a leadership practice has a place in the evolving role of libraries and can shift organizational cultures to become more user-centered and embrace innovation. In addition to these benefits, the chapter discusses specific project examples, challenges, and tips for library leaders to successfully implement the process. Design thinking is translatable across library types and throughout private industry. Discussing design thinking as a leadership practice can benefit the profession and communities by giving leaders a common language to use when learning from and sharing with each other in conversations about innovation.

Keywords: Design thinking; innovation; user experience; leadership; public library; academic library

Technological advancement in libraries has changed the nature of user needs. These changes have subsequently created new opportunities for public and academic library spaces and services, requiring evolving leadership practices. Library administrators and managers must employ leadership practices that effectively support rapid change and integrate innovation into organizational culture. Two trends particularly relate to these emerging necessities: user experience (UX) and design thinking. Libraries are increasingly allocating resources to UX work by creating UX positions and teams. There has also been a rise in libraries implementing design thinking to solve complex problems and to create new services, spaces, and initiatives (Peet, 2016).

This chapter discusses the experiences of two library leaders implementing design thinking in their respective libraries. M. Boisvenue-Fox is the Director of Innovation and User Experience at Kent District Library – a large, multi-branch public library – and regularly leads design thinking teams. K. Meyer is the UX Librarian at Grand Valley State University Libraries and leads a small team, employing design thinking primarily as a way to improve physical spaces and services. For both authors, implementing design thinking has resulted in enhanced UX through creative solutions and tangible improvements to library spaces and services. Adopting these techniques has also had the unexpected benefits of fostering collaboration, empowering staff, and narrowing the gap between frontline staff and executive decision makers. Design thinking has improved the authors’ own leadership practices, and they suggest that when library leaders adopt this approach, it can shift organizational cultures to embrace innovation.

BACKGROUND

Kent District Library

Kent District Library (KDL) is comprised of 19 branch libraries in a suburban system in Kent County, Michigan, but does not include the Cities of Cedar Spring, Grand Rapids, Sparta, and Solon Township. Branches vary in size and each community branch is unique in the user demographics it serves. KDL began to adopt the design thinking process four years ago when searching for a better way to implement changes and to support staff innovation and problem solving. Library leadership was first introduced to design thinking through Craig Wilson, a library board member and Steelcase Education Director of Market Development. Steelcase is an international office furniture manufacturer that embraced design thinking years ago. Wilson introduced this process to library leadership as a way to change the library’s frame of reference when approaching problems or opportunities (Boisvenue-Fox, 2017b).

What was not immediately evident was how this process would effectively bring together more diverse perspectives, which was a priority consistent with KDL’s leadership goals. KDL’s leadership team had already started to focus on more inclusive decision-making, and design thinking has allowed the library to build teams that represent many aspects of its multi-branch library system. Working together on these teams levels the playing field between staff and administrators, leveraging the diversity of their experiences, perspectives, and knowledge. After the initial introduction to design thinking by Steelcase employees, Boisvenue-Fox took an Integrating for Impact workshop on design thinking at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY

Grand Valley State University is a Carnegie classification Master’s Large public university serving approximately 25,000 students in western Michigan. The University Libraries’ UX Team was designed in response to Grand Valley’s student-centered mission (Meyer & Fisher, 2017), and a core function of the team is to understand, anticipate, and respond to student needs and to continuously improve library spaces and services (Rodriguez, Meyer, & Merry, 2017). As the UX Librarian, Meyer leads the UX team, which includes 6 support staff members from what would traditionally be known as access services and approximately 25 student employees. This team takes the lead at the service desk of the Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons.

Grand Valley has a campus-wide design thinking initiative that includes a for-credit design thinking course and an extracurricular design thinking academy for undergraduate students (Grand Valley, n.d.). This initiative started with the recognition that employers are looking for employees who are prepared to work in highly collaborative, team-based environments and who have the ability to work with others to solve complex problems (J. Berry, personal communication, January 10, 2018). The initiative seeks not only to give students a competitive advantage when applying for future employment, but also to benefit the community by providing a pool of applicants who have the skills employers desire (J. Berry, personal communication, January 10, 2018).

The campus-wide interest in design thinking evolved alongside Meyer’s own exploration of how to best carry out the work of the UX team, and design thinking became an important tool in her toolkit as a UX librarian. Meyer started implementing design thinking with her team primarily as a way to collaboratively solve specific UX-related problems. While she did not initially view her implementation of design thinking in terms of its impact on her leadership, it has become an integral aspect of her leadership practice, has improved her ability to lead the team, and complements her strengths-based leadership style.

DESIGN THINKING

While there are numerous definitions of design thinking, the authors prefer this one: “Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. Design thinking utilizes elements from the designer’s toolkit like empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovative solutions” (IDEO, 2018, para. 1).

Design thinking is not a new concept. Rowe’s Design Thinking, situated within an architectural context, was published in 1987 and references much earlier work. The term likely became more ubiquitous after the publication of the popular Change by design: How design thinking transforms organization and inspires innovation (Brown & Katz, 2009). The process has been spread through teaching with the Stanford d.school Institute of Design and IDEO, which are particularly well known for this dissemination. Design thinking is also frequently discussed in the context of business leadership and management (Kolko, 2015; Martin, 2009). Libraries are increasingly implementing design thinking processes (Peet, 2016), and IDEO teamed up with the Chicago Public Library and the Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark to create the Design Thinking for Libraries toolkit (Toolkit, n.d.). However, there has not been much discussion in library literature specifically linking design thinking and leadership, and the authors believe this is an important conversation.

IMPLEMENTING DESIGN THINKING

Design thinking is a flexible process that can be implemented in a variety of ways to accommodate unique library cultures. Design thinking experts vary in articulating the steps of the process, and even the authors discuss and implement the process differently. The steps the authors suggest for the purpose of this chapter are as follows: (1) Research/Understand/Empathize, (2) Define, (3) Ideate, (4) Prototype, and (5) Implement & Evaluate (Boisvenue-Fox & Meyer, 2017, 2018). This approach is related to steps defined by the Stanford d.school Institute of Design, Ambrose and Harris’s Design Thinking (2010), and IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Process (Design Kit, n.d.) and merges how the authors have implemented the process separately in their libraries. While the following overview is brief due to the many resources available to understand design thinking, the context is important for the subsequent discussion on using the process in a leadership practice.

STEP 1: RESEARCH/UNDERSTAND/EMPATHIZE

This step focuses on techniques that allow a team to better understand a problem from the user’s perspective, which is critical, because people often jump into problem solving before taking the time to ensure the user’s perspective relating to the problem is fully understood. There are a variety of user research techniques that can be implemented in this step. One-on-one interviews, observations, physical usability tests, cognitive mapping, user diaries, and questions posted on public whiteboards are examples of techniques the authors have implemented at their respective libraries (Boisvenue-Fox & Meyer, 2017, 2018; Meyer, 2017); details about these methodologies are prevalent in UX-related literature.¹

The work in this phase is powerful in developing empathy. When staff observe users struggling to complete library-related tasks or hear users talking about their challenges, it naturally increases empathy. John Berry, the former Director of Grand Valley’s Design Thinking Academy, believes that empathy is the most significant difference between design thinking and other forms of leadership-related thinking. “And it’s not just about problem solving, it’s also about problem discovery because when you start with empathy, you discover problems you didn’t know you have” (J. Berry, personal communication, January 10, 2018).

STEP 2: DEFINE

This step involves using the insights gained in the previous step to pull together the who, what, where, when, and why of the problem or opportunity. This step also includes filtering insights into one clear statement that the team hopes to solve. For example, Meyer’s team defined this statement: How might we help students find seating that meets their noise-level preference (as well as their other preferences) when the library is busy? In this step the team also articulates why solving the problem is important to users, and the discovery of this why often leads staff to the “a-ha moments” that further expand their empathy. At the end of this phase, the team needs to articulate design principles, which are short statements that describe what success for the project will look like (Boisvenue-Fox & Meyer, 2017, 2018). Establishing design principles before ideation is important so that the team can later filter the ideas generated and choose which ideas to prototype.

STEP 3: IDEATE

Ideation differs from and is more effective than traditional brainstorming. The purpose of this step is to explore a myriad of ways to solve the problem statement and then filter those ideas to one or two ideas to prototype (Boisvenue-Fox & Meyer, 2017, 2018; Meyer, 2017; Meyer & Psyck, 2017). Various ideation techniques can be implemented to expand the potential of ideas generated and ensure contributions from everyone on the team. An example of an ideation technique is brainwriting, which involves everyone writing an idea on a notecard and passing it around the table (Gray, Brown, & Macanufo, 2010, pp. 82–83). Team members add new ideas or build on an idea already listed, and at the end of this process, the team considers the ideas and stars the ones that fit closest to the design principles (Gray, et al., 2010). Adding ideation techniques to their leadership practices has been especially beneficial for the authors. Generating ideas as a group can often be challenging. Sometimes one person monopolizes conversation while others are hesitant to share their ideas; people often start criticizing ideas; and the group often strays from the original purpose. Implementing ideation techniques mitigates these chal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction: Supporting Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Part 1 Tools for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Part 2 Library Activities Related to Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Part 3 Case Studies of Libraries Supporting Entrepreneurship and Innovation
• Part 4 Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Library Education
• About the Authors
• Index