In our manifesto post by Rochelle, she talked about how innovating is hard. It is also necessary. Without innovation, companies, or in our case libraries, stagnate. It doesn’t take long before organizations that refuse to innovate, or innovate very slowly, become irrelevant. Libraries right now are innovating. People are doing a lot of cool things with Social OPACs, Social Media, video, customization, etc. But we could still be doing better. Not everyone is on board for some of these innovations and changes.

The main obstacle to innovation is fear. This is the fear of change but also the fear of failure. Yet, neither of these should be that scary. Change is inevitable. Heraclitus said, “Nothing endures but change”. The moon waxes and wanes and the tides rise and fall. Nothing stays the same, so we should be used to it by now. And failure is a good thing. Failure is what gives rise to innovation. Edison said when inventing the light bulb, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

So change and failure can be scary but we need to overcome them and see them for what they really are: tools for improvement.

That brings me to technolust. I, like most of my colleagues on this blog, have been known to exhibit the telltale symptoms of technolust: drooling at new handheld devices, ogling netbooks, irrational impatience for Google Wave. Yet also like many of my colleagues, I realize that the new shiny tech can’t be the driver in whatever you’re doing.

Sure, maybe it is the right move to set up some new social media service for your library, but why? You have to ask the “why” first. In fact, first you have to step back and ask what is it I want to accomplish, or where do I want the library to be in 18 months? Once you have this vision, the fun tech stuff will fall into place. It will be that much easier to sell your ideas to your boss or colleagues, especially if they may be a bit wary about these changes.

For more about some of these ideas check out Steve Shepard’s articles. I would recommend the one on Reverse Engineering the Future. He was one of the keynote speakers today and definitely has some great ideas about innovation and making your vision a reality.

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