by Amy Degner

A few years ago I left Hoover’s to stay at home with my daughter. When I returned late last year to do some contract work, I was immediately struck by how “future ready” Hoover’s had become. It wasn’t that Hoover’s had suddenly started rolling out forward-thinking innovations; the company had achieved this virtually at its inception, featuring both free advertiser-supported and for-pay premium access to Hoover’s company information during the mid-90’s. But, when I reentered the workplace this time, the electricity in the air was different. Hoover’s had a renewed sense of commitment to its customers and an intense focus on sparking new ideas to make their jobs easier.

We’re all budding visionaries at heart. The key is finding the right time and place to brainstorm. Sometimes it starts in the shower. Other times it’s a rough sketch drawn on the back of a napkin. At Hoover’s we simply refer to it as the “Innovation Lab.”

Late in 2010, Hoover’s launched its first in-house innovation lab, designed to stimulate creative thinking within the context of industry trends, customer needs, and competitor offerings. The mission of the Innovation Lab is to think outside the box, generate project ideas, and use the latest technology to push Hoover’s into its next generation. The lab has a dedicated space and staff who works with internal and external folks representing customer interests. Often our customer-facing folks (sales or customer service) will bring a specific customer issue, either seeking a solution or with a suggestion in hand. The Innovation Lab staff then works with the appropriate product manager to determine how the inventive idea fits into the overall product strategy.

Hoover’s Innovation Lab also sponsors monthly innovation contests, encouraging employees from all departments to submit ideas; the winner then works with the IT staff to bring the concept to fruition.  The lab also hosts an active online ideas community and an internal Innovation Lunch Series.

So far, Hoover’s has completed three monthly innovation contests focusing on wide-ranging areas of our business, from helping our customers to making our internal processes more efficient.

For Hoover’s being “future ready” doesn’t necessarily mean providing the latest and greatest widget. It’s more about keeping our finger on the pulse of our customers—knowing not only what their needs and wants are today, but also anticipating what will be important to them tomorrow…and then focusing Hoover’s talent in that direction. The Innovation Lab is just one way that our teams bring our customers’ future visions to life.

To my fellow librarians, what could you do to foster an “Innovation Lab” in your group, division, or company? How are you keeping a pulse on your customer’s needs today and anticipating their needs for tomorrow?

Amy is a stay-at-home Mom and Librarian in Austin, Texas. During her 10-year professional career, Amy has held a variety of roles including: Research Associate, Librarian, Market Researcher, Competitive Intelligence Analyst, Project Manager, Product Marketing Manager and Consultant. Amy enjoys a challenge and variety in her work (see previous sentence) and dreams of becoming a Children’s Librarian in the future.

by Donna Slaton, Kentucky & Tennessee Valley Chapters, Solo Librarians Division

Selection is the librarian’s most valuable tool for the future. Selection is not censorship. Librarians of the future should select for value and purpose with clearly defined goals in mind. When the whole world can “Google” anything in print pretty much, what will set libraries apart is the professional arrangement of valuable and useful materials, not the inclusion of vulgar, pornagraphic or trendy material just to say they are not censoring anything. It is time to “control” your stuff and choose wisely, not catalog anything and everything but choose selectively so that libraries are a respected resource not a less than “Google” sized collection of anything and everything.

Selection policies need to be reviewed often in this changing world not to reflect the largest possibilities for gathering in but the most specific scope for the library and its population to be served. Public and academic libraries more than special libraries have continuously grown beyond reason because they have in the last two decades tried to collect everything. But even special libraries that have a more narrow focus have been growing with the attitude that bigger is better to the point where storage and staff expense is not in line with value given to anyone except other librarians.

Weeding is also a necessary tool of selection. Once you have selected it, you have to recognize if it is not in use, or has never been used, you should move it out to provide space for necessary materials. Too many librarians still horde old stuff because they cannot bear to throw away a book. There is simply too much stuff in print for anyone to ever read and too many copies of most of it.

With the advent of OCLC network and Inter Library Loan accessibility, budgets for that continuously grew as well. When I graduated college in the mid 70s, ILL was for serious scholarly research – not for the public, private or special libraries to loan each other at growing mail expenses( which is more than the cost of a paperback), either the second oldest James Patterson novel, or an obscure author that is only held by three libraries, because his second cousin in another state just decided he wanted to read it.

We have promoted libraries as the respository of everything without focusing on needs instead of wants. Libraries cannot out google Google. We do not accept paid advertising. The sooner we realize that and specialize in what we do best as the original search engine the more ready for the future we will be with valuable materials and useful information, not just a room full of stuff.

With sharply focused collections, bibliographies of materials, and links specifically addressing our unique clientele’s needs, special librarians have an opportunity to lead the way in guiding users to the needed materials without gathering all of it ourselves. Future ready is smaller and smarter.

Donna F. Slaton is Librarian II for the Green River Correctional Complex – a medium security prison in Kentucky’s Dept of Corrections. She served 10 years as Associate Director of the Hopkins County-Madisonville Public Library and switched from public to special libraries in 2008, joining SLA in 2009. She writes a weekly column for the Madisonville Messenger newspaper and blogs under LibraryUp and LibraryLadyWrites and is Past President of the Kentucky Storytelling Association. Her web site is www.misspockets3.com.

by Christine Carmichael, Nebraska Chapter, Knowledge Management Division

“Bragging isn’t becoming.”

“If you’re good (or great) at what you do, you don’t need to brag.”

I beg to differ! In an era where competition is fierce, we have to toot our own horns. We need to differentiate our skill sets and focus attention on our greatest strengths. Here is how two of my strengths work for me.

Every professor, every student I meet absolutely MUST know what I can do for them. Then I make them WANT me to prove it. I have connections with people because I’ve made it my business to know what they are passionate about. Then I keep an eye out for related things. A well-timed email or phone call with a link relevant to them keeps ME on the radar.

But, making connections isn’t just about building your network. In my daily work, making connections between disparate pieces of information (and sometimes disparate people) is often where I have the greatest successes. This is where serendipity comes into play:

A pair of Marketing students came to me (requested by their professor) for help finding information on golf drivers. Talk about specific! General industry information was fairly easy, but driver rankings were proving to be a challenge. A database search of “ranking” and “driver”, while broad (think NASCAR, not PGA) netted an article in Cigar Aficionado. The students were awestruck! It was exactly what they had been looking for, but they were willing to overlook it because it wasn’t in a place they were expecting.

From Golf to Cigars

I was able to make them see a connection – one they weren’t looking for – between GOLF and CIGARS. (What else does one smoke at the 19th hole?) The students departed repeating one of my mantras: “You never know where a good piece of information will turn up.”

I suppose you could define serendipity as “just waiting for happy accidents.” In 2004, University of Georgia’s Elizabeth B. Cooksey said it was “one’s discovery of something new combined with the realization of a connection between it and something one already knew…” For me (and I have to think for many info pros) serendipitous findings are things I count on in my research process. They are “a-ha moments” writ large.

Am I Future ready? Serendipitously so.

Christine Carmichael is President of the Nebraska Chapter of SLA and Communications Director the Knowledge Management Chapter.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures.  Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Cindy Romaine, SLA President 2011, caught up with Guy at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, where he was talking about his new book Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. The ideas he brings forward in the book seem particularly relevant for information professionals right now.

This year, at the Consumer Electronic Show, you introduced ten ideas from your new book Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. I came away from your talk convinced that librarians and information professionals need to learn about enchantment and take that lesson to heart. Using a broad brush, tell us what Enchantment is about.

Did you hear the story that a reporter asked Tom Clancy what his new book was about and he said, “It’s about $26.00,”? Mine is about $14, street. Actually, my book is about learning skills to become more enchanting so that you can delight your customers, employees, and bosses.

One key point you mention in Enchantment is achieving trustworthiness, which requires a knowledge of our users. What’s the best way to gain that knowledge and trust?

There isn’t a “best way” to gain knowledge and trust. Rather, the process requires an array of skills. The starting point of becoming trustworthy is that you trust others. There is a definite order here: first, you trust others and then they trust you. Then you need to be a baker, not an eater. A baker makes a bigger pie so that everyone’s slice is larger. An eater just tries to get as much of a finite pie as possible. Finally, trustworthy people are transparent and give for intrinsic,  as opposed to quid-pro-quo, reasons.

In an era of diminished resources and limited bandwidth, it’s tempting for information professionals to hunker down and focus on their core competencies. Yet in your new book, you share your idea of “defaulting to yes.” How does that work?

Defaulting to yes and focusing on core competencies are not mutually exclusive. Defaulting to yes means that when you meet people, you’re always thinking, “How can I help this person? If she asks for help, I will try to help.” Whether you help along the lines of your core competencies or not isn’t the key. What’s important is that you want to say yes and help.

I would think this is how librarians think anyway. Isn’t your default attitude to help people find information? Librarians can skip this part of the book.

This is me enchanting my boss. What does it look like?

Like it or not, the key to enchanting your boss is to drop everything when your boss asks you to do something. This can produce sub-optimal prioritization of tasks in the “big picture,” but it works. I never said enchanting people would be easy.

As you’d be the first to admit, not everyone has your phenomenal chutzpah. So, some of your prescriptions may seem a bit daunting. Can anyone be an enchanter? Please expand on this a little.

Enchantment is a matter of degrees, not either/or. Almost everyone can be more enchanting. Enchantment is like fitness: almost everyone can be more fit. Imagine if people were either fit or not fit, and there wasn’t anything you could do to change that.

I’m intrigued by your concept of reciprocity. In fact, I’ve been drawn into it, in asking you for this blog post—a great bit of mental jujitsu, by the way. What do you mean when you advise people to say “I know you would do the same for me?”

Reciprocity is what makes society work, and when society doesn’t work, it’s often because someone has violated the basic principle that if people help you, you should someday help them back. My hero, Robert Cialdini, is the person who taught me that when people thank you for doing something, the optimal response is “I know you would do the same for me.”

This phrase communicates three important points: first, I believe you’re an honorable person; second, we both know I did something significant for you; and third, someday you should repay me. That’s a lot of meaning packed into a simple phrase.

Cindy Romaine & Guy Kawasaki

In your book, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit you encourage people, when investigating their competitors to, “by all means, suck up to a research librarian.” We certainly appreciate the plug! Can you explain what you meant there and provide an example of your relationship with research librarians over the years?

Research librarians at the time I wrote that book held the keys to the golden castle of all the knowledge that was written down on paper. Mere mortals had a difficult time acquiring this knowledge without help. I can remember using the Reader’s Abridged Guide to Periodical Literature for hours in my youth.

Fast forward to today. There’s probably more knowledge than ever, and it’s more accessible than ever but the reinvented research librarian holds the key for using the Internet in the most effective manner. Many, but not all, people know how to use Google and Wikipedia, but Google and Wikipedia do not provide all of human knowledge. Some of that knowledge is locked away in private databases and some of that knowledge is difficult for a novice to find. That’s where research librarians still hold the key. They are the ultimate information curator no matter what hocus, pocus you hear about the “semantic web.”

You have your hand in many pies—writing, speaking, and running your company Alltop.com and Garage Ventures. How has a librarian or information professional helped you along the way?

Honestly, I don’t do much in-depth research for my writing, speaking, and running Alltop.com. The nature of my work is grinding it out and sucking it up. I’m the Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) of technology.

What’s your advice for a new college graduate just entering the workforce as an information professional?

The bottom line is that the Internet is the greatest threat or greatest promise ever to an information professional. On one hand, it democratizes information–bad news, does this mean information professionals are no longer necessary? On the other hand, there is so much information that it’s harder to find good, credible sources–good news, does this mean information professionals are more necessary than ever? A new college graduate should understand this dichotomy and, I think, has to reinvent what “information professional” means.

Get enchanted! Find Guy Kawasaki’s new book at his website: Enchantment: the Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions.