Panel: Sustaining Innovation: Tips & Techniques to Keep Momentum in Your Organization

This session was run under Chatham House Rules, and after brief introductions from the session leaders, we broke up attendees into small groups and facilitated their conversations around these three questions:

Question 1: Looking Up
How can we successfully implement new ideas in spite of reticent leadership?

Question 2: Looking Across
How can we best support our colleagues/staff to continue being innovative?

Question 3: Looking In
What tools for professional self-care do you use to keep yourself strong, motivated and moving forward?

And some nice sketchnotes on the session from Jason Alderman:

Session Description

At MCN2015 in Minneapolis, the Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art Kaywin Feldman remarked that staff should start “an insurrection when you are not the senior executive or you cannot convince the senior executive to embrace new directions”. That sounds great, but in practice there is often a fine line between disruption and subversion. We can all agree that innovation is vital to the health of any organization, but organizations can be unnecessarily resistant to change. For technologists, this can make even normal daily work seem like a constant uphill battle. This session will address how to combat “innovation fatigue”, including strategies for managing up, how to find or create allies in your organization, and when to fight for an idea versus when to let it go. It will be a combination of shared problem-solving + group therapy + networking with like-minded peers. Panelists from a range of roles from large and small institutions will begin by presenting real-world examples of success and failure from their own experiences. Attendees will be encouraged to share their own puzzles, and the panelists will address underlying issues to attempt to find ways to help. The session will operate under Chatham House Rule, so that everyone in the room is able to be brutally honest in a safe space. This session is for you if:

• You’ve got hurdles to innovation and you’re not sure how to overcome them
• You’re struggling in your job or even career and need immediate help
• You’re an effective rebel who’s ready to share how you keep going when the going gets tough Let’s work on this together.

MCN provides us with a powerful network of peers who sincerely support each other, this session will prove it!

Other Speakers/Participants

• Emily Lytle-Painter, Content and Experience Strategist, Independent
• Douglas Hegley, Director of Media & Technology, Minneapolis Institute of Art
• Jeffrey Inscho, Master of Disaster, Innovation Studio at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
• Annelisa Stephan, Manager for Digital Engagement, J. Paul Getty Trust