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Librarian Entrepreneurs: Demystifying a Professional Oxymoron: Steven J. Bell

- Bell’s Presentation – steal this ..
 

• Made Video of Question to start off presentation
• Hand drawn pictures and text

Name a Librarian who is an Entrepreneur? .. don’t now
Name any Entrepreneur? Gates, Trump .. don’t know

Confusion with “resourceful” “innovative”

7 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneur

1. Opportunistic: Israel and waste water
2. Creative Genius (or Team) Intermittent Windshield wiper (Pixar)
3. Customer Focus (Zappos)
4. Persistence (Berners-Lee)
5. Connect the Dots (spotting trends, see same things differently)
6. Passion (Blended Librarian Online Community)
7. Risk Taking

“Sessions” – Library chat platform – North Carolina

Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Future Libraries (Aaron Schmidt – notebook)

“Design Thinking”  IDEO “Deep Dive” (Nightline episode)

The Design Approach:

• empathic thinking (experience it live .. not by survey)
• identify problem before the solution
• brainstorming process
• prototyping process
• formative summative evaluation (let people try it)

10 Tips for Aspiring Librarian Entrepreneurs

1. Listen/Observe
2. Accept Hard Work
3. Something is better than nothing
4. Break a Few Rules (not so policy driven)
5. Ask Open-Ended Questions
6. Balance Risk & Evolution (use incremental change)
7. Develop Sticky Ideas – (Made to Stick – Dan Heath Book) – elevator pitch, succinct, emotional
8. Time For Ideas : 20% time for thought and reflection (watch for Google Waves)
9. Keeping Up  (Bell’s Keeping Up Blog) – trends, next big thing, disruptive technology
10. Use the Zoom Out Lens (JCollins … when things get tough)
11. Know your Core Values

Next Steps

• Talk to Users in their Natural Habitat
• Talk About Core Values with Stakeholders
• Talk about Design Thinking
• Talk about Risk Tolerance Level

Blog: Designing Better Libraries

In Video: Jim Neal (Columbia)

• Unbundle Heirarchy
• Create New Units
• Create Maverick Unit

Comments from Audeince

.. ways around flat hierarchy .. (ie. cross functional groups)
.. too flat makes a lot of work (need some .. hmm makes me think of Monkey)

*** Bell Also Mentioned Reference desks going away ***

Conference Summary Ideas: Wake Forest Dir.

Risk Management over Risk Taking
Paying faculty to work on better library assignments
AU Libraries Professional Development Blog
NJ Inst. Tech .. Doing interesting things