Sketch of: A Searchable Online Gallery of Innovation Examples
The Vision —
As envisioned, a searchable online gallery of Innovation examples would provide many concrete examples of the unifying Innovation concepts represented by a framework of Innovation’s fundamentals. It’s intended to provide a direct complement to this framework of fundamentals, as a supplemental learning tool.
Although the gallery would be made possible ultimately by the existence of the fundamentals — a high-quality, sustainable version — work on constructing a gallery might also support development of a framework, as Innovation examples repeatedly test working versions of the unifying concepts.
Here’s a sketch of a potential searchable online gallery of innovation examples:
An Ongoing World’s Fair of Innovation —
The ideal experience of visiting an eventual searchable, online gallery of innovation profiles might be like visiting a hands-on world’s fair or museum or trade-show … online:
For every single profile, innovation’s fundamentals — the constants — would be visible.
But innovation’s many variations would be equally visible, including as wings and special exhibits that are either curator-determined or devised by visitors, who could customize, archive, tag, and share their own collections. Visitors also could receive notices of (or search for) new profiles.
A wing’s cluster of profiles might reflect any combination of innovation’s many variations. For example, curated wings might feature profiles of offerings that are:
- world changing
- based on new technology, including AI technology
- based on bio-mimicry
- based on “appropriate technology”
- based on ordinary knowledge
- illuminating of innovation’s “social differential,” including catalysts for change in customers’ behavior and capability
- growing out of startup organizations versus other types of organizations
- contributing to sustainable development
- within ventures seeking a triple bottom line
- based on seizing opportunity versus addressing a problem
- based on “jobs” that customers “hire” a product or service to do for them
- illustrating increasing complexity, from an effective new connection of simple knowledge to a connection of a complex web of knowledge
- and so on.
Since visitors to this online gallery could go from one wing to another within a second or two, rather than walking long distances, there could be a large number of wings. Also, a visitor could arrange a wing’s profiles according to personal preferences and could create, save, and share their own wings.
The possibilities for clustering are limited only by tags. In addition to variables such as those above, tags might highlight offerings that are:
- co-created with customers
- based on public-private partnerships
- benefiting a certain category of customer (retirees, teens, women, children, etc.)
- originally conceived of as new value with subsequent need to figure out a source of revenue
- enacted within public service agencies
- featuring disruptive innovation for any sector
- enacted by youth
- catalyzing change in customers’ behavior or capability, arranged by difficulty of change and learning
- led by a woman
- featuring a like-business-model (e.g., matchmaking of any type)
- filling a gap in the marketplace
- and so on.
The online gallery also could offer innovation learning tools beyond its collection of innovation profiles. It could include resources for educators (e.g., practice topics for youth), links to related resources such as Open IDEO and much more.
Subscribe to “Offering of the Day” —
The gallery could deliver an “offering of the day (or week)” delivered via email or social media (and perhaps featured independently in news media as “good” news). Subscribers could opt for particular industries for their offering of the day, with everyone receiving one universal selection. The latter is to support intelligibility of innovation’s constants across industries and more, including supporting cross-pollination.
Essentially, an offering of the day is to put innovation’s concrete purpose and practice into public drinking water, to stimulate conversations and questions. The offerings should be clear enough for middle school students.
Why an Online Gallery?
From cognitive science: “The surest way to help students understand an abstraction is to expose them to many different versions of the abstraction.”
And from the Kauffman Foundation:
“Human beings can observe and/or be shown how the activities of humanity have changed the environment, fostering the realization that other people may be able to also bring about change. … A sense of what has been done helps lead to a sense of what might be done, as well as an appreciation for the kinds of established constraints that might affect imagined changes.”
Prototype of the Gallery
This website also provides a simple prototype of this envisioned learning tool of a searchable online gallery of Innovation examples:
- The prototype, which features a small set of Innovation examples, doesn’t fulfill the ambitious vision of the sketch above.
- In particular, whereas the sketch assumes many Innovation examples, all sharing a profile template that’s based on a framework of innovation’s unifying concepts, the prototype’s profiles are similar but not yet based on one template.
- Additionally, the prototype does not include search capability. Nor does it include the filters and tags that would highlight innovation’s many types of variation, as a key basis for student searches.
How the Envisioned Gallery Might Become
Thoughts about “how” the gallery as envisioned might come about are included at this site’s accompanying Learning Leverage document. [LINK]
GO TO PROTOTYPE [LINK]