I like to tinker.  It comes from when I was a kid; I’ve used to take toys apart and tried to put them back together, or more likely, integrate them somehow. Think Toy Story’s Sid Phillips but much less violent.

As I’ve got older I’ve updated laptops, built PCs, and played with settings on things to see what else I can use something for. It’s something I’ve carried on into my working life – I play with blog posts over many revisions before I publish them. And then I still want to change them.

I think it’s a learning style I have; putting things together to compare and contrast and create a frame of reference to help me understand. I do it in conversations with people; you’ll introduce a concept and I’ll search for something to link it with. I do it with people too – mention a name and I’ll seek out a connection. It’s become a way of curating and it throws some interesting  combinations. I had a chat with Steve Wheeler the other day and he introduced me to the word ‘bricolage’ to describe what I do. I had a read of the definition on Dictionary.com and it’s quite cool.

I was prompted to create something else again the other day; Sukh Pabial had tweeted about how he’d used the Kubler Ross model to discuss change.  I’ve been considering innovation as part of my session with Steve at Learning Technologies this week and was immediately struck by the similarities between Kubler-Ross and Rogers’ 5 steps of the Diffusion of Innovation.

In his book, Diffucions of Innovations, Rogers states that the communication and spread of innovation requires a five–step process. His original five stages (or steps) were: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. Subsequently he changed this terminology to:

• knowledge
• persuasion
• decision
• implementation
• confirmation

If we overlay these headings with the Kubler-Ross model we get something like this:

I accept this is entirely unscientific in it’s approach but it helps inform my thinking.  It also prompts me to think of a few questions. These include:

• When people become aware of an innovation are they likely to deny its success before it starts?
• The depth of anger at a change may require a high and prolonged level of persuasion. Is this factored into your innovation?
• How much bargaining power does an individual have? Is it enough to lower the level/pace/depth/breadth of your innovation?
• When a decision to implement is made, are your users depressed?
• How far does implementation need to take place before acceptance is met?

No answers from me (like my last post) and I don’t even think we don’t need no education on this (contrived post title video link). I’m keen to develop this conversation so please add your comments below.