The diffusion of innovation & Kotter’s Process

In today’s class we discussed and went over two different processes to innovate people. The two processes were The Diffusion of Innovation method and Leading Change Kotter’s Eight Step Process. Both of theseprocesses are significantly the same and have the same end goal in mind to be reached.

The following is a illustration displaying the different sections involved in the diffusion of innovation method.

The diffusion of innovation

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The first 3 sections of this method are known as the innovators of the world. The first section in this method involves the innovators which make up 2.5% of the overall population. The innovators are people that are very well educated, knowledgeable, have multiple sources of information to help support their ideas and are not afraid to take risks in order to make their idea flourish. Section two is the Early Adopters that make up 13.5% of the overall population. The early adopters are people that are very respectable, opinion leaders, and like to try out new ideas but in a carefully planned out manner. The third section is the Early Majority section which involves 34% of the total overall population. This section showcases people that are respectable opinion leaders that serve as role models such as celebrities and are well known and respected by peers. The back section of this method is people that are known as bandwagon jumpers. The forth section in this method is the Late Majority people which also make up 34% of the overall population. This group of people consists of people that are skeptical, will use new ideas or products only when the majority of the population does. The last section in this method is the Laggards which make up 16% of the overall population. The people in this section are people that enjoy interacting with their peers and seldom hold positions of opinions over people that are leaders.

The Leading Change Kotter’s Eight Step Process is essentially the same as the Diffusion of Innovation method, but it goes through eight different steps to reach the goal of change. The eight steps that are used to reach this goal are:

1. Establish and/or reflect a sense of urgency

2. Create guiding coalition

3. Develop a vision and strategy

4. Communicate for understanding and buy in

5. Empower broad based action

6. Produce short term wins

7. Consolidate gains and produce more change/don’t let up

8. Anchor new approaches in the culture/create new culture

These eight steps are needed in order to implement change and establish a well known program. If innovation or change is something that you are trying to accomplish, I believe that if you follow the innovation curve or the Kotter’s eight steps, you will establish a well defined program and hopefully have people backing up your ideas and products.

Wiki Sites and Project Planning

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Today in class a lady by the name of BJ came in and did a presentation and walk-through on how to use a Wiki, and explained what a Wiki was, as most of the class has never done or heard of one before. A Wiki is basically a website that you can create and put on the internet and virtually anybody can go onto your Wiki site and edit and save whatever they please. In the end you have the last say of it the information others posted is adequate and reasonable for your website. We got introduced to doing Wiki’s as our project that we are presenting to the town of Colwood will be placed on a Wiki site and presented. The project that we are working on I mentioned in the previous post. There are two main tools that we have used in order to give the project a good structure. The first method that our group chose to work with was a website called tools of change (www.toolsofchange.com) this website was very helpful in the starting stages of piecing the project together. It sets up a nice layout and gave us a good idea of where we were heading with setting our objectives, developing partners, how to inform people properly, targeting the right audience, and choosing the right tools of change. Our group filled out these stages of the process, but realized in the end it was not the right approach for our project. The second tool that we used was called ADDIE. This stands for Analysis, Design, Develop, Implementation, and Evaluate. This approach seemed very easy and well laid out for our project. It is a very straight forward tool, the first step in the process is figuring out the analysis of the project by discovering what the real problem is. The second step is to design and to formulate processes. The thirds step is to develop the project and formulate the processes. The forth step is to implement the processes that you have developed. The fifth step is to evaluate the project by means of observations, intentions and suveys to see what happened and how successful the project was. My portion of the project entails working on the development steps of the ADDIE model, I will be looking at ways to make the project design details come to life. In this process of development I will be using a GPS system to map all of the trails around the Royal Roads University campus, enter the data into the computer and create a map of the trails. I will also be looking at grading the grade changes and elevations of the trails and rating them easy, moderate, or hard. I will also be looking at designing signs, names of trails, and walk the trails looking for historical facts that can be pointed out. The final part I will be looking at will be policies to see the possibilities of implementing lights and signs along the pathways to make it accessible to walk at night time. Through creating the development part of this project the team will be able to implement our trail map, and increase the amount of citizens that utilize the Royal Roads University trails.

Community Based Social Marketing

In today class Dr. Rick Kool talked about the concept of Community Based Social Marketing. This is a concept of reaching the community, not just by feeding them information for change, but for actually engaging the community in a systematic application of marketing way along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good. Social marketing is a great concept, but with any outreach to a community there are advantages and disadvantages that need to be dealt with. The advantages of doing social marketing in a community are that it is most effective when it activates people, it targets those in the community that care and are ready for a change, it’s a strategic and requires efficient use of resource, and its integrate and works on the installment plan. Social marketing is not just another advertisement as a clever slogan or message is portrayed strategically so that it reaches everyone throughout the community. To strategically plan out your concept, you must first know who your audience is and put them at the center of ever decision that is made. Show that audience some action, don’t just walk the walk, but talk the talk. If someone is willing to change their behavior or accept a new one there must be an exchange by you making an offer that is appealing to them.

The making of a new concept is sometimes hard to start and there are ten important questions that must be asked in the initial stages. The ten questions to a successful plan are as follows:

1. What is the social and environmental problems that need to be addressed

2. What actions can be taken to address these problems properly

3. Address who your audience is and how you are asking them to take action

4. What kind of exchange does the audience want for adopting the new behavior

5. How will you make the audience believe what you are offering is real and true

6. Who is your competition and what are they offering opposed to your concept

7. What is the best time and place to reach and intrigue your audience

8. How often and from who does the concept have to be presented

9. How can I integrate the audience to influence their behavior

10. Do I have the resources needed to create this concept alone; and if not, where can I find useful partners

After these ten questions have been answered thoroughly, taking every situation into mind, then the planning for your community campaign can be started. The 5 steps of constructing a meaningful campaign are to identifying barriers and benefits such as literature, focus groups, community surveys, stakeholder meetings and by doing market research. The second step is to develop a strategy plan by selecting tools to address these barriers by making commitments, introducing incentives, and by persuasion. The third step is to run a pilot test, evaluate it and adapt to make it work. Pilot projects are they way of taking your strategies to the real world and testing them by measuring your results, evaluating the end result and adjusting to improve the project. The forth step is to implement your project by just doing it, you need to be committed, use prompts to remind your audience, use social norms, provide incentives, scope our your competition and strive to be better than the competition, and make your concept convenient and easy. The fifth and final step is to continuously monitor your concept and adapt it for any necessary changes. If all of these questions and steps are strictly followed and laid out properly, the concept that you are trying to portray to the community should be accepted and succeed. (Kool, 2010)

Kool, D. R. (2010, February 25). Community Based Social Marketing. Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Open Space

In today’s class when did an exercise that was new to me called “Open Space”. This was done in order to create groups of people that think alike or are very passionate about a certain project that they would like to see done in the community of Colwood. The open space concept is a way to get people’s brains flowing and tries not to limit people’s creativity. Everyone had to write an idea that they would like to see put in place in Colwood to help the community become carbon neutral on a piece of paper and hang it up. Then the idea was to read all the different idea’s and projects and determine which ones were of interest to you and then to sign up for those projects. I signed up for the project about making a map of all of the trails on the Royal Roads University campus as there isn’t really one made yet. This will be done by either walking the trails with a GPS system and inputting the data in to Arc GIS and making our own map, or hopefully using existing layers. The map will consist of all of the trails on the RRU campus as well as the length of the trails, difficulty ratings, signs on the trail, signs pointing out certain species of trees, and lights so that people can also use the paths at night. Our team has also talked about going out into the community and asking people if they think it would be a good idea to have this map, just to get a general idea of how useful it will be. When I first moved out to Victoria to go to school at RRU, the first thing that I wanted was a map of all the trails on the campus so I could go for jogs and bike rides and discovered that they didn’t even have one. This will be a very useful tool to have for new students and people that live in the community as it is a beautiful place to walk, jog, and bike. The project will then be presented to the mayor of Colwood and hopefully handed out at local food stores, gyms and RRU. By making a map of all the trials I believe that it is a step in the right direction of becoming a carbon neutral community. The concept of open space was a very good concept as it allowed everybody to voice their thoughts and allowed people to work on projects that they were interested in and passionate about instead of being told what to work on. I really think this was a positive and great way of doing these projects as it is a very neutral process that had no limitations.

Resilience and Food Security

This week’s presenters were Gene Miller who spoke on climate change, Jennifer Girard who spoke about community geared towards sustainability, and Cindy Moyer who develops arts and environmental awareness in Colwood. Gene miller spoke about the cost of late stage capitalism and how it has affected our resilience, the other two speakers talked about local food security in Colwood. Community resilience is pretty much determined by local food security. Jennifer talked about programs that she has put together in the community of Colwood that involve local food security. The programs that she talked about were gardening universe project, gardens in motion, fruit tree project, and food guide. The gardening universe project is for people that want to grow food in their backyard, get seeds, plants and a mentor to help them map out there backyard and get a start. It encourages people to grow their own food and if they need help there are people that will come and teach them how to properly grow their own food. The gardens in motion is exactly what it sounds like, it is a flat bed trailer with plant boxes and beds on it and it tours around communities and shows people how to get more in touch with the cycles of life. The fruit tree project was a new concept to me and a great idea, it involves volunteers going to people’s houses that have fruit trees in their years and picking the fruit for the owners and then also being able to take some fruit themselves which is then donated to the food bank. The food guide project is pretty normal in more communities; it is pretty much a farmers market where local farmers sell their locally grown food. Cindy Moyer works for the town of Colwood and is trying to make a change for local food security, she develops arts and environmental awareness in the Colwood community. She is currently part of the mayor’s task force; they are currently working on a plan to produce green maps which point out the recreational parks and green spaces in the Colwood area. She also talked about how important local food is and ways to promote such as the tomato challenge that took place last year between the mayor of Colwood and the president of Royal Roads University. At this event both the mayor and president were given locally grown tomatoes and had to come up with their best dish. This in turn helped promote the idea of growing local food and keeping it in the community. I will sign off with this; I would beat the mayor or the president of RRU any day with my amazing cooking skills.

Community Energy Planning

The presenters this week were Laura Porcher, Manager of Partnership Development and Todd Litman, from Sustainable Transportation Integrated Solutions, who discussed energy planning and sustainable transportation. The presenters both talked about ideas of planning and smart growth for communities. This idea has been discussed a lot throughout the sustainability class and it is basically just planning around the infrastructure that is already built and utilizing it more efficiently. The discussion of more mixed land use was also a main topic, with of course the main idea of sustainability being the end target. Laura talked about the energy side of sustainability and how it can make a community for efficient and productive with saving energy. A quote from Laura that I really like was “whatever we build will be here after fossil fuels” which is very true, so the proper planning of communities infrastructure and street layout is very crucial. When looking at the design of a community it is important a key idea would be to follow the considerations of the Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow (QUEST) program which points out many characteristics to utilize to achieve a well thought-out community. Under this program they point out the idea of encouraging mixed use higher density urban development, reduce energy input required for a given level of service, match the type of energy with its use, manage surplus heat across applications and sectors, convert waster into energy, integrate onsite renewable sources of energy, and optimize grid energy use to increase the overall system and to help ensure reliability. When trying to save energy it is important to encourage energy efficient land use planning, improve energy efficiency of buildings, increase transportation efficiency, diversity the energy supply, educate and engage residents and businesses, and demonstrate local government leadership. Todd discussed the ideas geared towards transportation and was really encouraging people to ride bikes more frequently and put a big emphasis on working with the infrastructure that is already in place and improving it to make it more efficient to people that are biking or walking to places. The idea of working from home was also one that intrigued me, with the wide use of computers and the internet in today’s world I believe it would be a great idea for people to work from home instead of driving half hour to downtown Victoria just to do work on their computer there. This would be a huge was to help decrease traffic congestion and carbon emissions being put in the air. As we are always making small changes to improve society and make a more sustainable world, the decision that you make on a daily basis to drive or bike is important. As this helps in decreasing emissions put in to our beloved atmosphere and in the end hurts our environment.

The Future of Colwood

Colwood is a community on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. This morning we had Mayor Dave Saunders & Councilor Judith Cullington come in and talk to us about the community and where it stands now, and where it is going. It is a community where most of the people in our cohort at Royal Roads University live. Colwood consist of about 15,000 people which are primarily residents, consisting of around 6,000 homes. Colwood is a growing community that is estimated to reach a population of 32,000 people by 2028. The community of Colwood inhabits lots of endangered species such as the Garry Oak tree, which is one of the biggest endangered species in North America and the sharp tailed snake. There are many historical sites that reside in Colwood such as Fort Rod Hill, Fisgard lighthouse, and Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University. Colwood is home to the Esquimalt and songhees first nations. The municipality in Colwood relies on three main components before decisions can be finalized. The three crucial levels that ideas have to go through before they are pass are the community, administrative staff, and the mayor and councilors. The future vision of the municipality of Colwood is to be energy positive, carbon neutral, water smart, and a green learning city. This is the first I have ever heard about green learning and it intrigued me, Robert Bateman a famous artist has donated many of his paintings to Royal Roads University. A Robert Bateman centre is going to be build on the campus and will be a living building for a greener place. Robert Bateman thinks that by building this center that in his eyes it will help change one student’s way of thinking at a time. The mayor of Colwood took that saying into consideration and went one step higher and wants to change once city at a time. A green learning city for RRU learners would be great as we would have real life classrooms. Visitors from around the region and around the world could come and see demonstrations of new technologies. Businesses are encouraged to setup demonstrations of innovative technologies and this would help provide jobs for residence and support local businesses. The municipality of Colwood has many projects underway towards a transition town or a more sustainable community. The mayor stated this morning that over the last 2 years there has been a substantial change throughout the town of Colwood and it is only getting better. Recently the community of Colwood purchased a smaller truck that runs on only electricity and has replaced one of their regular trucks. They are hoping that they can replace the whole fleet of regular trucks with the electric ones. Colwood knows where they want to be and to get to this destination they are going to or already have implemented a smart growth with mixed uses in high density nodes in several places in the city, supporting transit services, recovering resources from wasters, fiber optics throughout the community and a Colwood community place. Colwood has an award winning Overall Community Plan (OCP). The next step in the transition of Colwood is to attract new businesses such as an eco-village where local foods, art, and culture can be displayed as people live in a living area that feels like a resort or vacation destination. The Royal Bay area is a huge potential place for a good development area for eco friendly establishments like this and Colwood would also like to implement a high tech business park to try to keep the people that live in Colwood staying in Colwood and working from their homes instead of commuting into Victoria everyday for their jobs. I believe that all of these changes and programs that the community of Colwood is implementing and promoting is a good start to a better transition for the community.