Vertical Management: A Barrier to Innovation?

This article by Chris Anderson really caught my eye. Speaking to the conference of CIO’s Anderson underlines the extent to which Web 2.0 applications, hosted services and social production sites are driving IT departments generally and CIO’s in particular towards obsolescence.

Translating this story to the Museum world is not difficult. The proof is in the pudding. Take the cultural sector’s general lack of Web 2.0 production. In this new age of content, users and web tools, notice how absent museums and cultural institutions are in defining how users interact with content on and offline. Looking across the cultural spectrum, there is almost limitless opportunity to develop access via API’s, cross-institutional collaboration, Web 2.0 tools or Public/Private technology partnerships. Yet, none of this is taking place at any meaningful level.

As Anderson notes, there is a new day on the web as “a zillion free hosted services on the web have replaced the functionality of the IT departments service by service…” These are the types of services and access that Museums should be leveraging – not just as cool outreach mechanisms but also as a way of increasing staff productivity and transparency. This shift is a realignment in sensibility, responsibility and priorities for IT departments.

Yet, these routes are barely being explored and, when they are, only being done by smaller institutions – take, for example, the Maxwell Museum’s build your own movie web tool.

Why is the majority so far behind? Why are there so few Web 2.0 leaders in the cultural sector?

There are two overwhelming reasons for this. The first, as Anderson notes, is the lack of understanding amongst the current generation of technology and institutional executives. These leaders, though “mildly interested” in new technologies and trends, are often threatened by these technologies and the paths to democratized and distributed production. (Anderson certainly isn’t doing any favors here labeling the CIO as “one step above Building Maintenance”)

The second reason for the lack of Museum adoption is the nature of the cultural sector. In the Museum world, the sector is incredibly stratified in terms of collections and resources. The general direction of adoption of both exhibitions and museum-practices is a trickle down from the resource and collection-rich institutions. It is a vertical sector in this sense.

This structure is mirrored in institutions’ management in an almost linear relationship. As resources grow, so do organizational charts. Amongst the most resource-rich institutions, there are immense bureaucracies to help coordinate the complex operations and priorities. This is significant because fortified bureaucracies only magnify the managerial layers with this power of “No” and lockdown. In Anderson’s musings, he narrows the institutional role of the CIO to the “unpleasant job of mopping up data spills when they happen, along with enforcing draconian data retention policies sent down from the legal department. They respond to trouble tickets and disable user permissions. They practice saying "No"…” These responsibilities are inherently conservative and dampening in reference to innovation and are distributed when middle managers rule an institution.

The trouble with this state of affairs is that it effectively negates technology innovation first within major institutions and subsequently across the sector. This can be seen not just in the vetting of new projects and resources but also at the staffing level. Because of the dampening affect, some of the best institutions face very real problems retaining talented and visionary workers. One reason, the sisyphus-struggle to build buy-in and momentum on new ways of delivering content when technology managers are only able to respond “No.” (See my previous post on Museum innovation)

This is a sad situation. It is these very same large institutions that have the most to give and gain from agile development teams and open-ended technical strategies. As the sector takes its cues from the funding/programming priorities of major institutions, there is a self-realizing cycle of stifled innovation.

There is another route though. As the STEVE project makes clear, committed Museum workers can adopt a form of social production that rises above individual IT departments and institutional priorities. The tools developed by this consortium have the ability to create new paradigms for Museums, their collections and the public that these serve. Clearly, websourcing and user-generated (augmented?) content benefit the entire cultural sector as both a content model and a development structure.

It is time for more Museums and practitioners start asking “What if…”, even if they have to do step outside their organizational chart to do so.