New from BookNet Canada for 2024: BNC CataList - Tech Forum 2024
Strategic development in a local HEI context
1. Strategic
innovation in a
local context
Paul Walk
p.walk@ukoln.ac.uk
UKOLN is supported by:
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
2. nearly the end of
the workshop
for this year, and
you must be a
little tired....
2
3. content
• local innovation in a recession
• DevCSI and the developer community
• the strategic developer
• web-managers and local developers working together
3
5. is local IT expertise a
sunk cost or an
investment?
5
6. cost or investment?
• IT often regarded as a sunk cost in HEIs....
• ...but a capacity for technical innovation is a strategic
resource which needs investment
• in the institution
• in the sector
• maintaining the capacity for technical innovation is,
itself, an investment
• outsourcing IT has a cost
• reduced capacity to innovate
6
7. what do the following have
in common?
• Colgate 1806
• Lilly 1876 (invented concept
of prescription drugs)
• General Electric 1892
• Hershey’s 1894
• Microsoft 1975
• 3M 1902
• Black and Decker 1910
7
9. “Established companies
sometimes perceive disruptive
innovation to be risky. But success
is possible. In fact, the greater
risk comes from assuming that
business as usual will allow
companies to achieve their
strategic aims....”
Scott Anthony, Can Established Companies Disrupt?
http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2008/12/can_established_companies_disr.html
9
11. how established orgs innovate
• “Put the customer, and their important, unsatisfied job-to-
be-done at the centre of the innovation equation”
• local context, customer facing
• “Embrace simplicity, convenience, and affordability”
• local context, convenience
• “Create organisational space for disruptive growth”
• invest locally in capacity to innovate
• “Consider innovation levers beyond features & functions”
• “Become world class at testing, iterating & adjusting”
• local integration, tweaking SaaS, rapid innovation
Scott Anthony, Can Established Companies Disrupt?
http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2008/12/can_established_companies_disr.html
11
12. is this possible without a local
capacity to do technical
innovation?
given limited resources, how
do we make the most of what
local technical expertise we do
have?
12
14. DevCSI
• building capacity among HE developers
• cost-effective training
• community-based peer support
• raising the profile of developers within H/FEIs
• showcasing the technical innovation of HE developers
• dev8D - like IWMW for developers :-)
14
15. stakeholder survey
• 495 respondents including developers, their managers,
IT directors, vendors, funders, users (academics,
librarians, researchers)
• 75%+ agreement that local developers understand the local
context and act as a bridge between remote service
providers, open source communities, and local end users, and
add value by integrating into local contexts
• 75% agreement that local developers work closely with end
users to deliver innovation (more work needed though)
• 70% agreement that local developers are undervalued as
evidenced by short term contracts, lack of professional
development or career opportunities and poor management
15
17. events!
developing for the developing phone based
mobile web applications
workflow tools
reading list hackday
Open Repositories
developer challenges
pair programming
agile prototyping dev8D
techniques OER hackday
engaging developers with open
source software eBook/ePub Hackday
17
18. building stuff together
• building stuff as
free-form R&D
• doing so in a very
open environment
• contributing ideas
18
20. the manager’s view
• "They gained a huge amount. They came back very
enthusiastic and full of good ideas. It did a great deal
for morale and motivation…. It's a very powerful thing
when your peers say that you are doing something the
best,"
• “...decided to use the momentum of Dev8D to move
forward with agile working and the List8D project by
providing the development team with two very
important assets: physical and mental space.”
20
21. the power of networks
• peer-peer training (£85K at one 2
day event!)
• collaborative development
• pooling of expertise
• knowledge-transfer to non-
developers (librarians, web
managers, researchers)
21
22. value for money!
• having local/
institutional
developer resource
available is valuable
• that local resource, while
limited, can be backed-up by
a community of peers
• a well connected
community of developers is
greater than the sum
of its parts!
• developers can empower
users
22
23. responsive innovation
• agile & embedded
• frequent F2F between developers & users - finely tuned &
tailored solutions
• responsive - perpetual beta
• small, responsive incremental changes are possible
• “if you want to keep incrementally improving the user experience then
you need to retain a local capacity to do this”
• gluing - the day job! (AKA enterprise integration)
• from gluing locally installed vendor software to gluing SaaS
• bespoke interfaces on common platforms
• innovation happens in a local context
23
25. case of the missing career path
Higher Education Institution
?
Postgrad researcher/developer Academic
Undergraduate
Employed developer Manager
?
1 2 3 4 5
}
}
} Spontaneous technical
could happen here
Spontaneous technical
innovation does
happens here
Strategic leadership
for technical
innovation could
happen here
25
26. a strategic role
Local
Systems
this is where the developer
Technical net works with peers
Requirements Peer
Developer
this is where economies of
Organisational
End User scale and cost reduction is
Requirements
Requirements achieved
Remote,
User/ Strategic Remote
(commercial)
Domain Local System
technical (SaaS)
expert Developer
contacts
}
} this is where local
innovation happens
local context
this is where the cost of
outsourcing is mitigated
remote context 26
27. student as producer?
• Lincoln University (Mike
Neary, Joss Winn)
• Students actively
innovating for the
University, with official
blessing and strategic
investment
27
32. devs & web management
• URLs have become more important to developers
• good management of URLs is going to become
very important
• there is some convergence between CMS and
application platform - e.g. Drupal
• tension between the desire to hide complexity from
the user (e.g. Google Chrome disguising the ‘location
bar’) and good practice on the read/write web -
making URLs ‘cool’ and ‘hackable’
32
33. “linking you”
• Research on how
institutions currently
arrange their
identifiers
• URI 101
• Recommendations &
data model
• Space-time
• domains and
institutional URIs
http://lncn.eu/toolkit
33
34. open institutional data
• Open Data and the Institutional Web at IWMW 2011
• Chris Gutteridge
• Dave Challis
34
35. key information sets
• together with the general trend towards open data, KIS is
likely to drive better information management practice in
HEIs
35
