Erik Schilp (r) and Valentijn Byvanck (l) present Blueprint to Jan Marijnissen.
This blog was once started to document the (digital) development of a museum of national history in the Netherlands. As most readers will know, that museum never happened. What most readers – acquainted with our very visible projects such as xwashier and the National Vending Machine – might not know is that a large part of the work done by our curators has never been made public. Until now.
Yesterday in a packed Felix Meritis in Amsterdam the publication Blueprintwas presented. The book shows in detail our plans for the design and contents of a museum of national history for the Netherlands. It contains sketches of exhibitions, descriptions of displays and interactives and even ideas for the architecture of the physical building. It is the outcome of years of work by some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and beautifully designed by one of my favourite designers in the Netherlands.
Last week Jim Richardson (Sumo/MuseumNext) and I hosted a 2-day workshop to help the Qatar Museum Authority (QMA) develop their digital engagement strategy. After two intense days of gamestorming, project design and requirement discussions I left Doha with the strong feeling we might have to look east if we want to discover what the museum of the future looks like.
QMA’s vision is to be a global leader in the world of museums, art and heritage. Currently, they operate two museums and many others are planned. Their range spans from the existing mindblowing Museum of Islamic Art till a (planned) collection-less National Museum and an interactive Sports Museum. Their chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa talks beautifully about the reasons behind such a strong focus on culture in a recent TED talk.
After an inspirational session with the innovators network heritage (INE) yesterday, in which we discussed past successes and future plans for cultural world domination, I thought it would be nice to forget the debates about open linked data and digital sustainability for a while, and look back at the core of our job: innovation.
Below is a list of some of the core points that are good to be reminded of every now and then related to innovation. What is it, where does it come from and what can it bring us? Some of the points are apparently obvious, others less so and might be project or organisation specific. I’d love to hear your take on innovation in the comments.
Innovation is the process from idea to delivery. As a friend once told me, ideas are as abundant as successfully finished projects are rare.
Innovation starts with observation. As Geoff Mulgan writes, “Innovators generally have a wide peripheral vision, and they are good at spotting how apparently unrelated methods and ideas can be used togethers.” This means a good innovator is usually a generalist, has an eye for detail and great curiosity about how things work.
Innovation is often obvious. Don’t discard ideas because they seem too simple, they might never have been tried before. Or as the late Peter Drucker said, “The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to day, ‘This is obvious! Why didn’t I think of it? It’s so simple!’”
Innovation can happen anywhere in your organisation. Probably, your biggest win isn’t to be found in the social media department, but it doesn’t hurt to let them look (together with communications, collections, programming, sales, etc.).
A business model is part of every innovation. If an innovation isn’t meant to add some real value to the visitor’s experience, collection management, the budget or something else, it’s just a crazy idea getting too much attention.
It’s better to disrupt the market, than your audience. As every Facebook lay-out update shows, change always upsets people. Make sure you upset the right people, or as Clayton M. Christensen writes, “[Innovators] should try to disrupt their competitors, never their customers.”
Innovation can be high-risk or low-risk, but there’s always a risk. Risk-free innovation is like money-free poker: if you can’t lose you can’t win. No pain, no gain.
Returns are relative to the risk taken. High-risk innovation (expensive R&D departments, all-out bets) tends to yield higher potential returns than low-risk innovation (allowing staff to use 4 hours per week to try to do stuff differently).
Management and innovation are mutually exclusive. The problem with government innovation schemes, at least in the Netherlands? They usually ask for a planning and tangible outcomes. However, although innovation has tangible outcomes, it can never be sure what they will be at the outset, or innovation would be called project management. Also, you don’t want a manager to be too innovative, and an innovator to spent too much energy managing stuff.
Motivation is the key to innovation, for it focuses expertise and creative thinking. As Teresa M. Amabile writes, “People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction and challenge of the work itself-and not by external pressures.”
Innovation thrives on differences between people. There’s a compelling TED talk by Geoffrey West on how in bigger cities, there’s a lot more of everything. One of these things is innovation: more different people means more chance encounters, random interactions, inspiration, innovation.
Of course, this is just the 101. All quotes are from the The Innovator’s Cookbook, a series of essays and interviews curated by “good ideas guru” Steven Johnson. It’s a book worth reading, as it goes into things as ‘crazy’ as the set up of a building and its influence on innovation. All this, certainly, will be dealt with in future classes, either here or elsewhere on the Internet. For now, I’m ready to take questions…;-)
“In the organisation of the future, the decisions that matter won’t be taken in some high-tech war room, but on the front line,” says Tim Harford in Adapt. You, more than your CEO, will determine the success of your museum’s next grand project. True, she gives you the direction and funds and – if you’re lucky – the mandate and freedom to design mind-blowing products, but it’s your creativity, cleverness and skill that will make a difference in the end. Here are 7 ways in which I try to stay on top of things, and come up with great ideas for future projects.
Plan playtime
Is your calendar always full as well? Plan playtime. Playtime is not just time you leave empty to do whatever, that doesn’t work and you’ll probably sacrifice it to to-do’s anyway. Playtime is for instance 2 hours to go to a great store and look around, or an afternoon to go through your old notebooks.
Fill a random stuff folder
I have a folder called “playground” in the root of my project folders. It’s my digital scrapbook, full of random stuff. In it, I don’t worry about design conventions, budget, or even copyright (sorry!). It’s simply random stuff, like the pieces of an as of yet unknown puzzle. Look through it repeatedly, and maybe the picture will become clear.
Learn basic coding and design tools
The rapidest form of prototyping is the prototyping you can do yourself in playtime in the random stuff folder. But it’s not just knowing how to code a simple programme and design its front: simply learning about coding and design helps to spark creativity as well. Read the rest of this entry »
If you name your exhibition The Future of the Photography Museum you’re sure to spark my curiosity. And if one of the installations makes it to the Huffington Post where it unleashes a storm of negative comments – as happened with the stunning 24 Hours Photos by Erik Kessels – you can be certain there’s something worthwhile going on. And there is! If you’re in Amsterdam before December 7th(for GLAMcamp Amsterdam, DISH 2011 or leisure) it’s a must-see.
The Future of the Photography Museum and its accompanying magazine What’s Next? by Foam in Amsterdam are an investigation into the possibilities and trends of photography as a medium, the photography museum as intermediary, the relationship with the audience and even monetary and organisational aspects of the museum of the future. The exposition is slightly messy, which is not bad as it’s a mash-up of different ideas by four guest curators: Lauren Cornell, Jefferson Hack, Erik Kessels and Alison Nordström.
What stayed with me from the exposition is the position of the visitor and the general audience in the museum. We’ve been talking for at least ten years about the transformation of people from consumers to producers of information, but the role of the museum in this new world is still mostly unclear. Foam does some different suggestions for this, ranging from new forms of ‘passive engagement’ using digital presentation – Jefferson Hack’s Mother Sculpture – to ‘passive participation’ in which the wealth of UGC on the internet is used to create installations – Erik Kessels’ 24 Hours Photos – to active participation in the Activating programme, where visitors can contribute to the museum. Read the rest of this entry »
