We are in creative fields, so this stuff should be easy, right? But we hear all the time from people in the field that it really isn't. Conversations keep circling the same old ideas, while exciting possibilities languish. Our first module introduces the course by examining the context within which innovation takes place. We start by exploring the question of why innovation fails. The proposition is that it is more effective (and probably easier) to stop stopping innovation, than it is to get better at it. We'll look at a 6-level framework for understanding innovation constraints. Your goal is to gain a high-level overview of the course content.

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Our second week starts our in-depth examination of the framework at the individual level. Everyone in arts and culture is creative, right? Well, probably more creative - or more comfortable with creativity - than the average person. But people in arts and culture also understand better than the average person that creativity is a process, and you can get better at that process. In our model of individual constraints we will look carefully at Perception Constraints, Intellection Constraints, and Expression Constraints.

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The lone genius hard at work in her garret is, we know, not exactly how the world of art and culture really works. This week's topic is Group Innovation Constraints and is grounded in the research and insights of the field of social psychology. We will be exploring the way that group dynamics affect the problem of innovation. Our basic premise is that in order to move from a creative idea to an innovation, you will need the cooperation and collaboration of others.

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This week's topic is Organizational Innovation Constraints. We are interested in understanding how organizations function in ways that can facilitate or constrain innovation in terms of their Strategy, Structure, or their Resources. This perspective is grounded in the idea that to develop and execute an innovative idea, you are going to need some form of organization, and the choices you make in terms of its functioning are consequential to its ability to innovate.

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This week's topic is Industry/Sector Innovation Constraints. We are interested in understanding how the dynamics in a sector will facilitate or constrain innovation. We start with the story of Kodak's invention of the digital camera, trying to understand why they were unable to be successful at commercializing it. While there are some organizational innovation constraints that apply, we'll see that taking the perspective of economics and strategy, looking at competition constraints, supplier constraints, and market constraints, can provide a much more powerful analysis and explanation.

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This week's session explores the perspective of the sociologist and anthropologist. People who adopt this view argue that innovation is likely to be constrained by the views that a society holds of itself, how it enforces those views, and the history by which it came to hold and share those views. In more basic terms, this view suggests that innovation will fail when a society does not see how a proposition for change can make it become more of what it wants to be.

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This week takes the perspective on innovation of the scientist and engineer. This view holds that innovation is constrained by the laws of nature and our ability to manipulate them. It focuses on the physical limits we hit when we try to do things like improve acoustics, present light-sensitive artifacts in an engaging and immediate way, or bring together thousands of people in one place for a festival.

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Our final week takes on the problem of innovating as if it really mattered. We start with the story of Apollo 13, a life-or-death situation that required intense creative problem-solving, and consider the leadership behaviors that made successful innovation possible. Next, since our focus so far has been on improving our own ability to innovate, we discuss how to use the innovation constraint model to drive adoption by those people who are the targets of our change.

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