Personal Blogs

Adaption-Innovation

There are two styles of decision making. (Kirton, 1976, 1977, 1980)

Adaptors ’stretch’ existing agreed definitions. They proceed within the established mores. Dominates management.

Innovators ’reconstruct’ the problem, they separate it, emerging with much less expected and probably less acceptable solutions.

'They are less concerned with 'doing things better' than with 'doing things differently'.

Across a population, Kirton and others have tens of thousands of people to go on from completed inventories to go on, there is a Normal curve of distribution (Kirton, 1977)

I am an innovator and somewhat out on the far edge of the scale. Does this render me and people I have met who are ’innovators’ unemployable? With certain teams, in certain orgsnisations we are incompatible unless you want us there to act as a catalyst, consultant or communicator.

Any problem goes through a series of stages:

• Perception of the problem
• Analysis of the problem
• Analysis of the solution
• Agreement to change
• Delegation
• Implementation for most was two/three years after the problem became apparent, whilst a few were tackled with the bare minimum of analysis. Objections were often only overcome (then collectively forgotten) as a result of some crisis. Rejection was often based on WHO was putting the idea forward.

Cf. P111

Disregard of convention when in pursuit of their own ideas has the effect of isolating innovators in a similar way to Roger's (1957) creative loners.

32-item inventory, theoretical range of 32-160 and a mean of 96.
Cultural innovativeness see Indian Women p114
Solutions sought within the structure by adaptors so nothing changes.

'Tolerance of the innovator is thinnest when adaptors feel under pressure from the need for imminent radical change.' Kirton (2011:115)

It is unlikely (as well as undesirable), that any organization is so monolithic in its structure and in the ’demands’ on its personnel that it produces a total conformity of personality types. P115

How an innovator or adaptor can be an agent of change where all around have a cognitive style alien to his own. Kirton (2011:117)

Reference

Kirton. M.J. (1984) Long Range Planning 17, 2, 137-43 in Henry.J. Creative Management & Development 3rd ed. pp109 (2011) Ch8 Adaptors and Innovators: why new initiatives get blocked. M.J.Kirton
Kirton.M.J.(1977) Manual of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory.
Rogers.C.R. (1957) Towards a theory of creativity. In H.H, Andersen. Creativity and its cuktivation. Harper.

Driving 63 miles to a Tutorial yesterday morning I caught something about Dee Panger on Saturday Live BBC Radio 4.

I'd just be listening to a poem by Selina Godden on Spring, which was composed like a blog post from London to Winter.

There were inheritance tracks from the Speaker of the House of Commmons, John Bercow:

Ziggy Stardust : David Bowie

Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush

Over the course of a single working day, keep an eye out for examples of good practice wherever you may find them.

During a commute, reading a newspaper, magazine or journal, observing 'things' (tangible products) in action or experiencing some service delivery. 

How could any of these be adapted to suit your organisation?

Try and discover a good idea that could be adapted to suit your organisation from the experiences of as many of the following as you can:

A member of your family (at work or school or wherever)
A friend
A colleague
A supplier
A competitor
A customer

• Tesco customer suggestions and response board
• Free content on Facebook; pay for the piece of paper.
• OMU plasticated wall for planning
• Electronic sign in at Doctor's Surgery
• Barcode entry to Gamesmaker Training
• Rotating three lanes at swimming club so each in turn gets the attention of the coach.
• Self-service check-out at WHSmith, Victoria Yo Sushi conveyor-belt food servings
• Social Media Marketing eLearning from MMC learning

What has anyone else come across?

Never one in the last two years to get behind I am now playing 36 hour catch-up.

I got through six hours of reading overnight, there's a tutorial tomorrow that must count for something, then another 6 on Sunday. Maybe a few hours on the train on Monday and perhaps another 6 on Tuesday, even Wednesday.

Next weekend I'm coaching Saturday then in London for a day of Gamesmaker Training ahead of the Olympics.

Can an EMA be written in transit?

Is there a large element of luck in radical innovation or is it directed by highly tuned intuition!

Is it the nature of radical innovations to be so far ahead of the market that market research can contribute nothing?

Can you think of an example from your experience that succeeded?

Can you think of another that failed?

With the benefit of hindsight could the success / failure be discerned at the time?

Think back to new products or services you have experienced.

What was the stimulus for their creation.

Intermitten wipers. A better and safer driving experience in light rain.

Stoppers on skis. I can remind having a strap around the ankle, which would snap or come lose. You'd fall over and the ski would vanish. Safer for people who used to be hit by skis ... though you still lose a ski a deep snow.

Contact lenses. Vanity. No more glasses to fog up. Sport (especially swimming). A market.

Amazon. Thought I was saving money by not shopping on the High Street at Christmas only to spend far too much online. The new way of doing things.

PayPal. Convenience of online payments. A need.

iPad. Online 24/7 Tried tablets before and failed, this works.

Kindle. Using 'The Swim Drills Book' and showing young swimmers images on the Kindle by the side of the pool. Reading The Isles by Norman Davies and able to carry it about. I'd like an A4 size version.

Sony Alpha digital camera body. It takes Minolta lenses I bought 25 years ago. Brilliant.

Brushes: iPad App used by David Hockney for 'painting'. It works. Brings painting and drawing up to date alongside wordprocessing.

Though some 16 days behind with the next block (or book) I feel on familiar ground having done H807: Innovations in e-learning; indeed the more I read, the more that B822 (Book 3) and H807 (Innovations in e-learning) appear extraordinarily complementary.

As so many are currently blogging about H807 (as required) I look forward to tracking the course from their notes, as well as mine from 2010.

I often said I would have liked to have done H807 again, in this way I can.

Repeating a theme I developed in H800 too of personal development planning (PDP) I see this NOT as repetition but rather as akin to a glider rising on a thermal, so although I am going over old ground, I am doing so at a greater height.

(Maybe I am now seeing too how a Masters Degree advances on the undergraduate degree and the PhD on the Masters).

According to Michael Kirton's Adaptor-Innovator

Theory 'Innovators do things differently' while 'Adaptors do things better'. Kirton (2003)

• Boeing 737 as an example of adaptation (continuous change)  over innnovation (discontinuous chsnge) which understandably risk averse managers would avert.

B822 Book 2 Activity 1.1

Can you think of examples from your experience to illustrate each of the following cells?

Radical innovation :

Product (including services): iPod, Dyson (as presented to the public), QWERTY keyboard, Sony Walkman, Xylaphone, distance learning utilising TV and Radio (the OU), lynk digital phoning through the computer vs analogue phones.

Process: women doing men's work during the First World War, a country switching from driving on the left to the right (Sweden?),

Incremental improvement

Product (including services): Dyson (as developed), tyres, road surfaces, car phones to mobile phones, less sugar and salt in processed foods, the M25, eBooks,  Virtual Learning Environments.

Process: Kaizan, Women in the Army, Navy and Airforce, Going Green, the rise of facism (retrospectively incremental demise), sorting recyclables and landfill, 
31 entries here containing QWERTY fail to find this, which is my blogged late grandfather's memoir:

'One day J.G. had my father carry this ‘Blick’ up from the car; it was a German typewriter. J.G. tried to show me how to use this Blickenfurentstater. It was a portable affair with a wooden case. The top row of letters began ZXKGB so it came in before QWEERTY when they had to slow the action down on account of the metal keys getting jammed if you typed too fast. I did all the typing after that, up until the First War. We started out by doing the letters with carbon copies. During the war they got girls in for the first time doing that job'.

Wherein I'd say lie two innovations as responses to the problem of keys jamming and of, ironically, lack of manpower.

It's invaluable to be doing some e-training as compared to e-learning.

The Olympics lend themselves to actions and activities; learning goes on in your head whilst training involves your body as well as your mind.

It worked.

I know stuff about the Olympics and Paralympics that I did not know before. I have got my head around the role of Gamesmakers and have bought into the positive, inclusive, inspirational approach.

A workbook, a CD and links to a website is standard training fair. Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them, then tell them what you told them would sum it up.

But why change a format that works?

Seb Coe introduces then a series of vignettes and activities take you through loads of stuff, from background to specifics, using video here, click and view there as well as deeper engagement with a few Q&As too or typing up some ideas. It took me 90 minutes.

Already I have some of this knowledge effortlessly embedded.

Could you teach a degree or postgraduate degree in this way? Why do I imagine that learning design should be any more complicated?

Good execution, simple design, not too flash, or cheesy.

Done for the right price with a practical feel to it. In the past my involvement in such things was to go out and shoot the video, often with green screens and actors, helicopters and composed music, 3d graphics and interenational travel.

Noam Chomsky on the Purpose of Education

Average page views by month. Why not by week? Why not the daily figure. And how does viewing change during the day? (It's fairly obvious to get a fraction overnight compared to late afternoon and evenings when OU folk are online). As my tutor says repeatedly when it comes to marking a TMA he does not wanting to be asking himself 'so what?'

In WordPress you have a myriad of ways of understanding what is being read, how often and by whom. You know where people have come from, the search terms used and even what takes them away from your pages. And people leave comments, or subscribe or like.

Here you get a current no. of page views. Nothing else. No indication of which pages are being read.

This makes fascinating viewing.

The rhythm in a Tutor Group session on the MAODE. I doubt other courses get a fraction of this kind of activity. I also know tutor groups in H800 that are moribund by comparison, while others still get double the activity. It's down to the tutor, as well as the mix and ambition of the participants. It helps that many are 'digital residents' too, folk like me who are online for several hours a day in any case.