I’ve challenged myself to write an article for NESTA about the leadership challenges arising from open innovation and user-led innovation. These are issues I’m interested in, but certainly not expert about and I wanted to find out more.

Just to make life even more – shall we say – ‘interesting’ I’ve decided to try to research the article in the spirit of collaboration that typifies open-innovation and user-led innovation. I’ve only done something like this twice before – when I attended the Museum Next un-conference in October and contributed to Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum book wiki.

There are days when this feels like I am walking before I can run, but on a positive day I hope it’s akin to ‘walking the talk’. I thought it might be useful to briefly reflect on the process of collaboration as I’m experiencing it in case:

a)    Anyone has any advice or experience about how to deal with the issues that are arising?

b)    Because I suspect I’ll be experiencing first hand some of the challenges that leaders in arts and cultural organisations face when they embrace collaboration through user-led and open innovation.

How on earth do you design a participatory process that works?

I’m used to designing processes with include some collaborative aspects (such as consultation, gathering information) but nothing as comprehensive as this.

There is a big tension between the need to deliver and timescale – which is shorter than I would have ideally liked – and the process I would ideally use. Perhaps there is a point when there really isn’t enough time to be participative? I am reminded of the wise words of someone I once worked with (which she tells me comes from an African saying) ‘if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go further, go together.’

How do you encourage people to contribute?

When I ‘signed up’ to be involved with the Participatory Museum wiki I was interested to note that I was asked about my motivation and what ‘reward’ I was seeking (if I remember correctly options included recognition, monetary reward, better access to content).

It feels awkward to be asking people to contribute without having anything to offer in return (except perhaps recognition in acknowledgements), especially I’ll be paid for the article and they/you won’t.

The biggest fear is – of course – whether anyone will want to contribute in this way and how to reach these people? I’m making efforts – some behind the scenes and using a variety of approaches  – to muster up willing volunteers but contributing takes time and I’m also not sure how many people are contributing to professional blogs regularly? I know there are globally, and particularly in the museums sector I’m coming across lots of activity, but I’m less aware of this in the UK and my specialist field (visual arts). I am constantly delighted and surprised when people do contribute – and delighted especially by the quality of those contributions – but for every online comment I’m receiving two private comments by email and a similar number of verbal comments when I see people. I wonder whether we just don’t feel comfortable yet with online communities?

Perhaps if I was more effective in facilitating participation online that would help – but that’s a skill I’m having to learn too.

Striking a balance between offering a framework/ structure and some content on which to comment, and leaving a space for discussion/ input?

My instinct in approaching the task is to dive straight into the content – reading, analysing, working out the answers for myself. Clearly I need to do some of this, but equally I need to work out the process through which I will work with others and at what points I will seek external input and how.

Building collaboration into the very heart of a process needs you to be very confident about your ability to make something happen and clear about what you are hoping to achieve (if not yet how) because you need to be able to share your thoughts and open up the thinking publicly before you’ve worked out the ideas for yourself.

Nina Simon is a big fan of providing some constraints in participation as she believes very few people work well with totally open parameters – it’s like the terror of facing a blank page. In fact the most popular post on her blog is titled ‘Better Constraints Make Better Participatory Processes.’

Re-reading one of the comments recently posted on my blog, I think Louise Govier really sums up a lot of the challenges very succinctly:

‘I think that one of the biggest challenges facing arts leaders in the near future is working out ways to lead while giving up control, and doing that effectively in practice (as well as nodding wisely while reading accounts of Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia and thinking, sure I could do that!). One of the main ideas around this that I’m exploring in my own Clore research is about the confidence that leaders need to have in order to be able to stand back and really let others contribute, clarity about who they are and what they stand for, and about seeing themselves as creative producers even if they head up a conservation unit in a very stuffy museum. At the same time, leaders will need to put frameworks in place that will enable others to contribute, building their skills and vocabularies so that they can take an active part in the creative conversation. Leading while standing back and enabling others to come in – that’s the challenge.’

Well, it must be working to an extent if someone else’s post is providing some of the answers I’m looking for!

I’ll keep posting about the experience as things develop – as well as posting about the research content and asking for suggestion so sign up to the RSS feed for regular updates.

Any other answers, suggestions etc are more welcome than the first cup of tea of the day (and that’s saying something).