MBR: Innovators Dilemma by Clay Christensen

I decided I was going to read a book a week for a year, here's a quick review of this week's book.  You can see the ongoing list here.

Basic Info

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clay Christensen

Why I read it

This book is often referred to as the "go to" book on disruptive innovation, it's been on my radar for a bit, it was time to get it done.


How it connects to the Public Sector

While the Innovators Dilemma draws its research from private sector examples the lessons it points to - especially those about the blind spots created by good management and serving current customer needs - are equally applicable in the public sector.


What I got out of reading it

Anyone looking to lead a big change in their organization may want to consider it as creating a new line of business and spinning out an entirely new organization to do so. The book highlights the fact that new and emerging markets (needs) are almost impossible to serve if those trying to deliver are beholden to processes that evolved to meet other needs. It argues that there is a difference between sustaining innovation (innovation that helps you better serve your current market) and disruptive innovation (innovation that allows you to serve a new or emerging market). While I haven't given it a lot of thought yet, the book has made me wonder if movement towards open government and open data will be best achieved by pursuing sustaining or disruptive innovation strategies.

Either way, I got a lot out of The Innovator's Dilemma you will too.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

This week got me thinking

I spent last week in Richmond Virginia and Washington DC. I visited old friends and made new ones. I put in a couple days of probono work for the great city of Richmond, and spoke at the Next Generation of Government Summit in DC.


It's been a whirlwind week and I am completely exhausted but the week got me thinking that maybe I should just stop and take the time to say, thank you.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

The secret sauce of change management

A long time ago, in a bureaucracy far far away a policy wonk named Nick was tasked with creating a wiki dashboard that showed - in real time - what everyone across the policy sector had on their plate.

The idea was to help the sector coordinate its business better and encourage a more proactive, rather than reactive, approach to information sharing.

"hard as nails" by PixelPlacebo

Nick was still relatively new to the department and took to his task with great rigour.

He built a series of nested (bilingual and accessible!) wiki templates so each person would only ever have to edit their own page.

He focused tested the design with users, and feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

He incorporated keeping the dashboard up to date into the Human Resources Action Plan. He arranged for training on how to use the software.

And if memory serves, he even managed to get the project into a senior manager's performance agreement.

After about 6 months of work, despite all of the measures outlined above, the initiative was dead in the water.

The reason it didn't work was that populating the template was largely seen as a duplication of work by people in the department who were already required to fill provide the same information in their quarterly reports.

Staff pushed back on the duplication and returned to their old ways, feeding the machine vertically rather than sharing horizontally.

Eventually Nick abandoned his efforts and scuttled the pages.

The lesson ...

We often get so caught up in nurturing change that we forget that we must also fend off competition that could undermine its viability; that the real secret sauce to change isn't seeding the new ideas, but rather killing the existing lines of business that compete with them.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect