The Apple Approach to Libraries Pt. 1

Don’t Listen to Patrons

Yesterday was my day off. As usual, I spent the morning reading and staring out the window

at my local coffee shop. The place wasn’t overflowing, but it was steady. It’s a smaller place off the beaten pat

h, so it never is too busy anyway. 15 years ago, this place wouldn’t have existed.

As Steve McCallion notes: “Imagine twenty years ago asking a room full of moms if they’d

be interested inpaying $4.50 for a cup of coffee. . . We would never have starbucks.”

Part of the Apple approach is not listening to customers. They never ask anyone ab

out their products. They don’t create focus groups. They

don’t run trials. They just create.

Existing Realities Limit Future Possibilities

That’s McCallion again. As he notes, consumers, patrons, are limited by the services that already have. Focus groups can tell us what patrons like that we already offer (storytime anyone?), but they’ll never tell us what they need. In fact, the more people we ask, the more likely we are to get boring middle of the road answers.

I’ll admit that much of my interests in libraries are related to assessment, seeing what people do. However, I don’t see a problem with testing and getting analytic results. After all assessment can only see what works, it cannot tell us what ought to be. So what do we do?

Creating New Services, Don’t Imitate

There are a variety of books out there, Design Driven Innovation, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Blue Ocean Strategy, that discuss creating new services, so I won’t go into it too much. Rather, I would encourage libraries to think broadly. What we absolutely should absolutely not do is copy successful businesses that are different than us. We should not add coffeeshops because that’s what Border’s has. We should not try to become county Social Services because it already exists (although partnerships might be a good idea). Rather, we need to look at how our well established trust with the community can lead to new services that no one anticipated.

And before anyone has a chance to argue that businesses can serve less people  and can thus specialize more, I’d like to point out that my home (Madison, WI) has 10 Starbucks and only 9 public libraries. We are an equal presence, but they are changing and we are standing still.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/180837714/sizes/m/