June 27, 2019

Today started with a class session at the hotel, where we discussed many things, but among them were the third and fourth chapters of Ten Faces, and neo-Liberalism and its effects on public institutions such as libraries and universities. What resonated with me most from this class was our discussion of the fourth face of innovation, the hurdler, because I find myself identifying with this persona the most. One of my favorite parts of our discussion was when we identified hurdlers who we see as unsuccessful in their pursuits. This manifests in many ways, but in many of the examples we discussed this manifested as innovative solutions resulting in unintended negative consequences. This discussion was important to me personally, as someone who identifies with the hurdler perspective, because reading in the book about all of the successes of hurdlers can be a bit misleading about the power of pushing through and taking charge no matter the costs. It was heartening to see that there are cases of failure, and to be reminded that there are costs to pushing your own ideas over those of others. There is definitely a healthy balance between independence in innovation and listening to the input of others in order to avoid making a mistake. I think this balance also falls into the "pillars" of innovation that I mentioned in an earlier blog post, about how many of the faces of innovation share similar qualities, and I think that striking a balance between independence and collaboration is one of those pillars, and as a hurdler I think that this balance may be particularly hard for this persona to find. In our discussion of finding this balance, I had the thought that it may be the case that it is best to be a hurdler when the idea you are advocating for is your own, and primarily influences yourself, but best to listen to others (and heed warnings in particular) when the idea/innovation affects a marginalized group. Once an idea is designed to impact others, it becomes important to include that group in a discussion about how your idea works.

After our class meeting, we traveled to the Van Gogh Museum, where we spent our first two hours in sessions with program coordinators for the museum. The first presentation, about the Van Gogh Connects program, was interesting to see because of how it tied into class material about Ten Faces. The program aims to draw in groups of people who are not currently well represented in the populations of people visiting the museum, specifically migrant groups between the ages of 18 and 30. As they work to develop this program, they continually bring in samples of people from these migrant groups and engage them with a prototype of a new way to interact with the museum. After getting feedback, the museum adapts their prototype of what the program would be like, and brings in a new sample of people. This constant engagement of the stakeholder, adaptation and production of prototypes reminded me of the experimenter persona from Ten Faces, and it was awesome to see the innovation in progress, and watch its success. I also thought it was awesome how readily the museum adapted to the data they collected which showed that the migrant teens they were targeting did not feel impacted when they went through traditional viewings of the museum. Without adapting and innovating new ways to interact with the museum, it's likely that their efforts would always be somewhat futile to increase the attendance of this population, because if patrons leave without being impacted by the displays they will not return or suggest the activity to a friend. While this finding could easily be met defensively--arguing in favor of the traditional museum experience--the Van Gogh Museum's adaptations for the betterment of target populations' experiences is admirable.

We also discussed the Feeling Van Gogh program with its creator, and the efforts that they described as part of the creation of the program reminded me of the cross-pollinator. Our speaker explained how the tour guides needed to be trained on how best to enrich the experience for visually impaired visitors through their descriptions of the artwork, but that it was difficult to find this training. In order to do so, they connected with a museum in London which had already implemented a program for visually impaired visitors, and asked them to come give seminars on their work in the area. This reminded me of the cross-pollinator discussion that we had in class today, and how one of my classmates brought up the point that an issue you may be having does not necessarily mean that issue has not come up elsewhere and been solved before. By acknowledging that this museum in London had greater expertise than they did, and taking advantage of using that resource, the Van Gogh Museum created a better program faster for their visually impaired patrons. The origins of the Feeling Van Gogh program also harkened back to some key pillars of innovation, and specifically one of the qualities of the archeologist perspective, in the sense that the program was built out of one small observation. As the sunflowers painting was being taken to be scanned to get turned into a poster, it came to the attention of our program coordinator that the textures of the brushstrokes could be felt to the touch, and would potentially be interesting to have available to patrons. Without this small observation, this rapidly growing and innovative program would likely not yet be in existence, and drives home how a minimalistic observation can blossom into a great innovation.

After we finished our session with guest speakers, we walked through all of the museum (which was gorgeous), and then went out for a group dinner at a nearby Italian/Tapas restaurant. It was a great dinner because I really got a chance to talk to a lot of the grad students who I hadn't spoken with before, and the food was delicious! All in all, an excellent day!