Innovation Boot Camp

Innovation Boot Camp is an initiative proposed by Robin Bergart and M.J. D’Elia to openly investigate the nature of innovation. The program is designed to answer one basic question: Can we learn to be more innovative? Of course, this question applies to us as individuals and as a larger organization.

The University of Guelph Library is currently undergoing a major organizational renewal. In a nutshell we’re moving from a liaison librarian model to a functional team model. As we redefine our work and reshape our organization, it made sense to revisit some of our core values. One of the values that we consistently mention in our strategic documents is our “commitment to innovation,” but what does that mean? It’s one thing to say that we’re innovative, but it’s quite another to prove it.

We wanted to take the opportunity to explore the process of innovation more fully – and process is the key. We’re not trying to solve a single library issue, we’re trying to learn more about creative thinking and innovative problem-solving so that we can apply these processes to existing problems. Think of it this way: soldiers have to pass basic training before they ever see the front line of battle. We want to give people a foundation in innovation before we expect them to reinvent their jobs or our library.

We invited members of the library staff (from all departments) to join us and selected six participants from the applications. The hope is that these individuals will help us experiment and take what they learn back to their work teams in our new organization. In other words, we’re not running an exclusive club, just a group of early-adopters.

This blog is our attempt to communicate some of what we’re doing to our library staff (and to the larger library community). To respect the process we’ll only be posting a basic overview of what we did for each weekly session (with a few pictures from Robin), we won’t be posting every little detail for the world to see.

Thanks for checking this out. Feel free to poke around and come back often!