[Web4lib] "The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate" at ALA this month

[Tim Spalding]

RE: "How do you separate effective innovation from "innovation for
innovation's sake"? It's one thing to be innovative to be trendy, and
quite another thing to be innovative in a way that improves a
library's services."

But this is true in every single field of human endeavor in which
innovation happens! Innovation in the software industry, for example,
is sometimes for the good and sometimes not. What distinguishes
libraries from some other fields are differing attitudes toward the
possibility of failure. In Silicon Alley, having burned through
millions of VC money in a failure is a resume plus, not a minus! Or
maybe I should say "risks leading to failure," since libraries are
okay with gradual failures. That, and finely tuned mechanisms for
rewarding good innovation and killing bad. But maybe that was your
point.