Ed Morrison’s Garage

Ed, when you talk about the "'civic space' outside the four walls of any one organization" it occurs to me that when we're talking about the involvement of institutions of higher education (and maybe especially research universities), we also need to be concerned about the "civic space" outside the four walls of any one discipline, department, or administrative unit *within* the institution. It's my belief--and something that I'm pursuing in my doctoral research, as you might recall from our conversation in DC--that universities have to get their own "civic infrastructure" in order if they're going to be able to participate well in their regional innovation systems. I'm eager to learn more about whether/how Purdue worked on this internal infrastructure. Since I'm getting to work with Scott Hutcheson and also Candiss Vibbert on the toolkit we're working on for the University Roundtable on Tranformative Regional Engagement, I suspect I'll have lots of opportunity to get those insights.

Thanks for your thinking, Ed. It's insightful and inspiring.

Jim, thank you for your kind words. I agree with your points. In my brief experience with universities, I have found nonsensical departmental boundaries, sclerotic administrative hierarchies, and just plain bad behavior.

The guidance we are following at Purdue comes from Vic Lechtenberg. He has advised us to forget the labels find the people within the institutions that are willing to collaborate: in other words, find the boundary spanners. (Interesting insight: In a network, leadership evolves from action, not position.)

While hierarchies will never disappear -- and they continue to serve a very useful purposes -- they do not innovate well. Innovations will take place in the framework of networks. These innovating networks are forming both inside universities (interdisciplinary research centers, for example) and outside.

The notion of civic space has a couple of different dimensions. The first is a physical location within a community. In my experience, colleges and universities can provide neutral locations where members of a community are willing to gather to discuss controversial issues. If you want to discuss the controversial issue in Youngstown, you go to Youngstown State University. In Akron it's The University of Akron. In Terre Haute, it's Indiana State University. In Muncie, it's Ball State University. In Lorain, Ohio, it's Lorain County Community College.

My feeling is that people are willing to come to these places because they sense that there are rules governing behavior. There's less likelihood that the conversations will be hijacked or that matters will get out of hand.

There's also a sense of fairness, openness and inquiry (all important democratic values). Colleges and universities aren't the only places in the community where difficult civic conversations can take place. People also feel often comfortable in libraries or community centers. In rural communities, I found that volunteer fire departments and county fairgrounds are good locations to draw people.

When I talk about the civic space, I'm also using this idea to capture the notion of networks, as opposed hierarchies. This space is inherently ambiguous. Yet, it is within this space that transformation can take place.

Our understanding of how to design and manage complex transformative initiatives within the civic space is at an early stage. Again, colleges and universities have a role, because research can help us understand how to manage complexity in these networks.

We have some marvelous examples of success. But what of the principles underlying the management of these complex projects?

That's the core question I've been asking myself for a number of years. There are others. How do we manage our collective assets -- the assets we are willing to share? How do we balance open participation with leadership direction? How do we think and act strategically in open networks?

What role does strategic intuition (as opposed to strategic analysis) play in developing strategies in a network? What are the new leadership skills that are needed to articulate coherence (as distinguished from vision) in a network? What new forms of governance (learning collaboratives, loose hierarchies) do we need to evolve? (So, for example, I've just invented the term "strategy-net" to define a type of open network capable of designing and managing complex projects. See: http://strategy-nets.com)

The research work for you are doing can help us answer these types of questions.