Do we suffer from the innovators dilemma

Finally I got to have a listen - Love it!

I love the idea of a tiny team of 5 data scientists.  There was a time when i was all the box office, all the DBA, all of the reporting for a team of 40 

There are a couple of things that I'm skeptical about.  I don't think that value to innovation is an S curve as much as a series of S curves.  And to that point I think that Waterfall production models have performed poorly against Agile ones.  For example I see TNEW v7 as a great product that has a variety of jump on - High value- points depending on the business.  We all wanted it as soon as it was released but only when the features we needed were released was it ready for us and us it.  These features are the midpoint high value sections.  I can see another one with Hosted Payments/Banana pay and another with CYOS Packages.  So it disrupts itself with each new feature some more than others.  Maybe I'm pushing the metaphor

For us "data scientists" (dirty word sorry) AI, Machine Learning, Analytics etc are all disruptive buy making us more or less agile compared to the market.  But I think here the biggest barrier to innovation here is attitude.  Being unable to make small changes to adopt the larger ones.  Our business practices change constantly here and we need to project manage and plan them at that constant rate.  We never sit still on process if it means better and faster and more accurate and ... more happy.  

That's why i'm a bit  about innovators dilemma.  Screw one big S curve. Get your data, make a decision, Do the change, evaluate the results - rinse and repeat.

Hope that's not too off topic and not too obnoxious.
Love you sharing these

H

Yeah, our friends out in corporate America and corporations around the world, don't typically understand about small "teams".  However, it is my hope that the network and initiatives like analytic Coffee will allow us as even though we are solo practitioners in our own organizations to be able to deliver well beyond expected capabilities by leveraging each others strengths.

I don't see your comments off-topic at all. 

My questions or vision about this are a little less narrow.  I'm thinking about what is happening to the traditional cultural sector, museums, theaters, and all of the rest.  The competition or the changes are not coming from within this community.  Or even from within the traditional experienced community by which I would mean to add things like sports, amusement parks.  I see some of the larges challenges for our organization coming from the likes of Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix, Game makers.  All are going after human attention.  And they are all disrupters the traditional place arts and culture play in society buy garnering more and more attention. To the point that there is less and less time for traditional arts and culture.  So from my point of view we as an industry are the incumbents who are well-tuned for our current audience.    How can we, how should we innovate?

I find it interesting how we all come at the topic from such different angles! Yes, the "tiny" team was hilarious to me as well. I agree with Heath about a series of S curves as opposed to one. The example of TNEW7 and when and how people are willing to jump on is an interesting take on how we as a community are or are not agile.

I believe that in our industry, we are both open to innovation and scared as hell of it. As non-profit arts organizations, something that many haven't cracked yet is how to run like a business. I think that that is the true "innovators dilemma" in our sector. When you aren't used to running like a business, it's harder to adopt and see the worth in things like Analytics and BI.

I do see the challenges presented by these big corporations like Netflix, and I also wonder how we stay relevant. All of these big disrupters help isolate people and keep them on their devices instead of interacting with others. I think about watching a movie on your couch versus seeing it in the theater. It's not just about the bigger screen and better sound quality. It's about laughing with a stranger that's sitting next to me about a preview that we thought was hilarious. It's about connecting with a person, even just for a moment. And I think that that's what our industry is all about. Human connection and experience, not just human attention. How do we refocus our audience on the joy of coming together to experience something?

Madeline Dummerth (Past Member) & Heath Wilder if I could give you each more than one +1 on your last replies, I would.

I note that Andrew Recinos has also been discussing and thinking about this topic over on his blog. 

Madeline Dummerth (Past Member),  You commented about our organizations needing to crack "how to run like a business".  As data folks what does that actually mean "to run like a business"?  In looking at the data what are we actually trying to solve for, for our organizations?

In the book "The Goal"  Eliyahu M. Goldratt suggests that the goal of a business, regardless of its industry, is to make money for its owners now and increase this money-making in the future. More specifically the quote is 

"So this is the goal:

• To make money
• by increasing net profit,
• while simultaneously increasing return on investment,
• and simultaneously increasing cash flow."

If that is truly the goal of being a business, then the equation that business people must solve is fairly clear.  And data folks working in business can work on doing those optimizations. When I worked for a large Fortune 50 business this definition of the goal was helpful to me.  All I had to do is figure out how my work helped the overall company optimized this equation.   

However, as cultural non-profits what does it mean to "run like a business"?

Does it mean, to run with the same fundamental goal as a business?  I have to say that, I'm uneasy with the goal of a non-profit cultural organization being to "make money for its owners now and increase this money-making in the future."  I'm left with lots of questions:

• Who are the owners we are making money for?
• How does this square with our non-profit legal statuses?
• Where does mission come to play in the goal of our organizations?

I've been thinking about this for a while.  I don't have all of the answers. But, I think that the goal of a non-profit is somehow fundamentally different from that of a business.  I'm wondering if our struggles to "running like a business" is somehow fundamentally that the goals of a business and non-profit are different.  

If this is true.  What fundamentally is actually the goal of a cultural non-profit?

I believe that the equation should have at least something about each of the following

• the scope of delivering on the mission to our constituents 
• the total value received by constituents. (regardless of whether it is monetary or not.)
• making the budget to deliver on the current mission
• maintaining the viability to delivering mission value in the future

What do folks think?  Does any of this resonate with you?  When you are doing data analysis for your organization, what are you helping your organization solve for?

There are lessons that we can learn from business, a lot of which is about our differences.  With out shareholders to service and profit as a focus we can be true to our mission statement.  We can avoid exploitative business practices and damaging methods of production.  Instead of concentrating on volume we can focus on diversity of our programs and the enrichment of our content and the breadth of the audience that we can reach.  We can be our best over our most lucrative.  We can transact in cultural integrity and ethical development.

100% with you on the value delivered.  Hearing Dr Tully Barnett at ANZTRUC last year was a religious experience.  How do we measure the cultural experience.  How do we measure our impact on our communities?  Is that not a part of our duty as data scientists?  I get asked these questions when we do acquittals and grant proposals.  

“If we do not measure what we value, we will come to value only what we can measure.” — Dr Tully Barnett

I inserted Tully's book because I love the cartoon.

There are lessons that we can learn from business, a lot of which is about our differences.  With out shareholders to service and profit as a focus we can be true to our mission statement.  We can avoid exploitative business practices and damaging methods of production.  Instead of concentrating on volume we can focus on diversity of our programs and the enrichment of our content and the breadth of the audience that we can reach.  We can be our best over our most lucrative.  We can transact in cultural integrity and ethical development.

100% with you on the value delivered.  Hearing Dr Tully Barnett at ANZTRUC last year was a religious experience.  How do we measure the cultural experience.  How do we measure our impact on our communities?  Is that not a part of our duty as data scientists?  I get asked these questions when we do acquittals and grant proposals.  

“If we do not measure what we value, we will come to value only what we can measure.” — Dr Tully Barnett

I inserted Tully's book because I love the cartoon.

That comic is great!

I realize I needed to define my idea of "run like a business" a bit more. Yes, as a non-profit we are mission-based, and our goal is to provide value to the community. How to measure those two things are still a bit of a mystery to me (especially from a data standpoint). We have started focusing our data analysis more on the number of people instead of dollars, which is a big shift. Of course, we still look at the $$, but it's not our main focus. I also like to take a look at where our reach is. Are we reaching constituents outside our zip code? But in the end, if you can't maintain a balanced budget, you aren't able to serve the community. That's where I start thinking about running like a business. 

That's great! I love # people metrics especial when it comes to audience development, diversity and reach. And you're all so right on finding applicable tried and tested models in the fir profit world.