Innovation and emergence

//TRENDS//Innovation: the emergent world we live in

Alberto Cottica

D4SB Master Course

From opportunity assessment to business planning in social businessLesson 5

giovedì 31 marzo 2011

What isINNOVATION?


Everyone thinks of artefacts....


... but it is people who give meaning to them.


A complexity approach: innovation happens in agent-artefact space


• in the 15th century manuscripts are large and heavy

• exquisitely decorated

• almost solely about religion

• heavily commented

• to read, you’d wear your best clothes, set them on a stand and read aloud

• handcopied by scribes

Example: the book


Example: the book

• enter Gutenberg (and his investor, Fust)

• he needs to invent around some technical problems that require metalwork skills

• goal: printing faster and cheaper manuscripts (and indulgences)

• 1450: success!


But then...

• Fust and Schoeffer have extra copies, so they invent the publishing industry...

• ...and advertisement (1469)

• Aldus Manutius invents the pocket book: smaller, cheaper, portable, uncommented, with a clean italic font (1490s)

• Pietro Bembo invents punctuation, the introduction (and the Italian language! 1501)

• modern reading is born, as culture democratizes


Technologically determined adoption


The Venetian book, language and format

Socially determined “adoption”

0

12,5

25,0

37,5

50,0

1500-10

1511-20

1521-30

1531-40

1541-50

1551-60

1561-70

1571-80

1581-90

1591-1600

%

8°Ita

FOL.Ita

4°Ita

12°Ita

FOL.Lat

4°Lat

8°Lat

Council of Trent


Exaptive bootstrapping dynamics

new artifact

organizational transformation

new patterns of interaction

new attribution of functionality


Innovation is emergent


It happens in the context of relationships


Its engine is diversity (but not too much)


Social business and social innovation are emergent too


Opportunities emerge from the crisis of the welfare state

0

15

30

45

60

1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

% of working-age population

% of population ages 65 and above


...build competitiveness by generating new attributions...

What is a schoolbus?


...and have far-reaching unexpected effects!

1985 2009


• Identify at least one innovation in social business and discuss in terms of attributional shifts

• Try to discover the context in which the idea first surfaced. Was there a generative relationship? If so, who were the main characters?

• write a blog post/wikipedia entry on your understanding of the role of innovation in social business. How important is it? Has it always be as important as now, or has it been more or less important in the past than now? And why?

Assignments!


Reading list

• For a theory of innovation broadly consistent with the lecture: D. Lane, Innovation and complexity. In D. Lane et. al., “Complexity Perspectives to Innovation and Social Change”, 2010

• For examples of social innovation: www.thebigsociety.co.uk/big-society-in-action


http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/big-society-in-action




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Innovation and emergence

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