Learning from cows

The expression "cow path" has some interesting connotations that are helpful to think about innovation and design:

1. People adapt things to their everyday habits just like cows roam and find good ways to reach their target through the landscape. A "cow path" is therefore a metaphor for people designing their own solutions.
2. Organisations develop ad-hoc solutions, but times change and these solutions may become obsolete in future times. Paving a cow path somehow implies that an informal or ad-hoc solution is recognised and formalised. The danger here is that the landscape has changed and the path is no longer optimal.
3. Cow paths can also be seen as 'best practices' seldom questioned by experienced people, but also by newcomers who interpret them as 'know-how' that result from tried alternatives.

Depending on the meaning you choose, one may argue that innovation requires challenging the cow paths (well known unchallenged paradigms), or alternatively, that innovation awaits in recognising and learning from the cow paths (bottom-up unexpected solutions).

A couple of useful and short articles:
http://asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-09/AugSep09_Crumlish.html
http://codesnipers.com/?q=node/15