Simply put, sustaining innovations are those uses of technology that simply digitize (and perhaps slightly modify) an old paradigm and make that traditional practice “modern.”  Using closed blogs for students to provide responses to readings and class discussion is an example of such an innovation.  Internet technology is used to enhance the traditional practice of student discussion, reading, and response; when such technology is applied, more active dialogue between student and instructor (and other students) is encouraged through blogging features such as commenting, tagging, and rating.

A disruptive innovation, by contrast, presents an entirely new paradigm and opens the users to new experiences that would not be possible without the technology’s use.  Students writing in public blogs is an example of such a paradigm change.  The Internet has, among other things, provided a ready outlet for cheap public distribution of information.  For the first time, the creative voices of individual students can be published for the world to see, and meaningful interaction with readers from all over the world can potentially take place.

So why does this matter?  The Internet is a great thing, so we all agree, and it has made many aspects of our daily life and work much more efficient (teachers taking student responses electronically in blog format), but its greatest potential to make a substantive difference is not in its ability to sustain old norms but instead to promote new ones.  Instructors and students have interacted for years without blogs, but students have not had the types opportunities to write for a broader audience until very recently.  Whereas the Internet acts as an enhancement in one case, it acts as the crucial ingredient in another.  “Innovating,” be it in a classroom or an office suite, requires participants to blend new solutions to old problems with completely new opportunities.  A true innovator is one who is able to seize these new opportunities while also understanding reality enough to know that the sustaining innovations are immediately helpful.  When given a choice, take both.

Three cheers to internal and external blogging!

(For a quick discussion of sustaining and disruptive innovations in a business setting, read the introduction of Clayton Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next)

technorati tags:Blog, Innovation

Blogged with Flock

This year I am going to ask students to do two different blogs

1.) an internal one in which they respond to questions in preparation for class, and reflect on the readings and issues that emerge in class.

2.) An external one,  using the Zimbio social news site, as a home base.  This is a site which allows for collaboration, and enables users to put up links to many different types of news feeds, blogs, tagging, and anything that you can link to with an RSS feed.   By surrounding students with news they can choose, the idea is to facilitate their engagement with the web as a news environment.