The September 25th issue of Business Week has a supplement titled IN-Inside Innovation. (I learned about it in the latest episode of Podcast for Teachers.)
Several articles in the supplement should be of interest to librarians working with teens. For example, there’s a short portion of an interview with Jonathan Ive from Apple where he talks about what is required in order to create innovation. Ive says:
“If you are going to design something that’s going to be truly innovative, my experience has been that this will require the company that’s going to make it to change — often to change fundamentally — in its approach to how it develops products, how it evaluates them, how it makes them, and how it markets them.”
What about putting that in the library teen context. If librarians are interested in bringing in new ideas as they relate to teen services, does that mean the entire library needs to change? How do teen librarians bring about the necessary change in order to innovate?
There’s also an interesting slide show of images that show a work environment that’s meant to promote innovation. Is this kind of environment available to teens in libraries? Should it be? What can we as teen librarians do to help integrate these types of environments for teens?
OK, this is a blog post filled with questions. But, isn’t innovation an important part of what teen librarians should be doing in order to support teens in libraries? If innovation is key then how do we help to make it happen? The articles in this supplement to Business Week might help lead the way.
