Learning innovation theory: one exercise

This week I tried out a new exercise in one of my seminars, and wanted to share it with you all.

The class is a graduate seminar on technology, innovation, and design in Georgetown’s great LDT program. There’s a lot of tech history and theory involved, and I’m always looking for ways to make that material live for the students.

During the past two weeks the class worked through Everett Rogers‘ Diffusion of Innovations textbook (5th edition). This is the great work on early adoptions, change agents, opinion leaders, homophily vs heterophilia, etc. Rich, deep stuff, clearly organized and studded with neat stories.

I admired how the students reflected on the material, thinking through its different concepts and exploring examples. Yet I still wanted more.

In one class session we were scheduled to finish Rogers, then start into Clayton M. Christensen’s disruption theory with one short yet pungent reading.* I was concerned that they were starting from a vague sense of disruption as chaos. Besides discussing the texts, what else could the students do to deepen their understanding?

Hence the exercise:

First, I asked the class (all students masked up, as well as myself) to come up with a hypothetical product, one which didn’t exist now. Fearing that might…