Disrupting Class: an incomplete review

LBiQ

Every summer I try to find some time to read books that are not strictly related to the stuff that I know and like. This year the occasion came from LBiQ (link: www.lbiq.net), the magazine of the company where I work. I volunteered to read and write a review for a new in-depth examination of Christensen’s Disruptive innovation theory, applied to current educational practices and their organizational ‘machines’, such as schools and the textbook publishing industry.

Disrupting Class - book cover

I’m sure you’ll wait to read my complete take on the book once the new LBiQ issue goes to print; what is important here is to understand what did I learn from this sort of cross-pollination?

I mean: unless you are into schools and learning theoretical issues (and these aren’t the things I breathe every day), why should you be bothered by this book? I’ve asked myself this question at least 20 times, between page 4 and page 48. Then I realized the book was important to me not because its goal of changing the USA school apparatus.
There are moments in the book when one can understand how big ideas and innovation don’t come by simply asking to your best customers; they will probably be happy with the system, and they could ask your organization for some improvement: a sustaining innovation. Disruptive innovation, on the other side, sparks by observing those who are discontent or, even better, your non-consumption area. Only when you deeply understand what the reasons of non-consumption are, will you see the gaps where innovation can be created. Therefore, user research techniques can be used for facilitating the creation of innovative solutions: primary research and a quasi-ethnographic approach can help understanding the reasons behind non-consumption, and it is able to provide a great deal of insights that will uncover new spaces for disruptive services. It’s not just tweaking and improving existing stuff; it’s a sort of paradigm shift.

fostering participation and business rules

A couple of weeks ago I watched an Icelandic movie (Noi Albinoi; AKA Noi the Albino ), and I was really impressed by one of the most trivial scenes of the movie.

To make it short: Nói (the main character) get into the coffee of the local gas station (where Iris works as a waitress) and asks for something to drink. Normal – so far.
Then Iris asks Noi if he wants to drink it in the coffee or take it away. Again, this is really common in places such as Starbucks and similar.
The surprise is that in this case the juice is actually cheaper if the customer drinks it in.

Subverting the “eat in / take away” balance has an economic reason: the juice bottle has a cost, and drinking it inside the coffee means the possibility to have it back.
But it also has a social reason, or at least a social consequence: it invites people drinking inside. The rule becomes one of the factors to spark a bit of “social life” into the bar (much needed, if you work at the coffee of a gas station in a remote fishing village in western Iceland).

Fostering participation is a difficult stuff. It involves environment design, a consistent conception of every touchpoint, a content to share, a great work on identity and trust, but also strong business rules: everything should row in the same direction. That’s the experience design, I guess.