This text has been written for the day "Business and open economy" held in Bilbao on 18 February 2011 and is part of the series Creative Economy for Underground.
innovation Bubble
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"The trouble with fiction ...
Is That It Makes too much sense. Reality never
Makes sense. "Aldous Huxley
When I refer to innovation as a bubble, I do in the same way as in the words" housing bubble "or dotcom bubble." That is, phenomena of speculative and spectacular, driven artificially with great enthusiasm by the same agents who benefit of them, which usually arise by exploiting a favorable situation. Phenomena, for that same kind of device and its high dependence on the cyclical conditions, often have short life cycles. When new elements that change the context or when the phenomenon simply exhausts its possibilities of development, the outward movement ends with the same suddenness with which it started. That is when we say that the bubble has burst.
The discourse on innovation has managed to attract media attention, mobilize budgets and very naturally rise as a new social value. But as good bubble is an artifact, ie a set artificially driven instrumental elements and made to serve a purpose.
Innovation speculative bubble works as far as it is based on an artifact of nature and self-referential discourse, in which everything depends on the level of language, symbols, narratives and myths (in other times, we would say propaganda) with which we tell ourselves what is happening around us. Although it rests on rational elements, it should be noted that the economy is not an exact science but a social science, ie, a field of knowledge whose intellectual tools are closer to psychology and philosophy that of mathematics.
By this I mean that as a device to analyze, from the point of view of speech production is not an eccentric approach or peripheral, but central, because it corresponds to the main use: to build a vision of world with their imagination, their rules of conduct and measurement mechanisms. From this point of view, economic science in general and innovation in particular fields of knowledge are instrumental to have a dual function: to provide a description of reality (worldview) and provide guidelines for action for coping with it (an agenda or a roadmap.)
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In the case of innovation, these functions are set to serve a specific purpose: to adapt the operation of enterprises to the changes wrought by the change in the economic cycle or, more specifically,
"promote new forms of business management through the introduction of innovative organizational methods and business models based on creativity and talent meet the needs of modernization English SMEs, thereby helping to promote employment and development of the productive fabric Spain. "(1)
is, maintain the same growth rate and the same logic of capital accumulation before the crisis. If at times the speech (the engine) is indeed innovative, purpose it serves is, however, totally conservative. Change, yes, but only that nothing changes.
Openness, transparency, participation, ethical hacker, crowd-sourcing, collective intelligence, commons, networking, cooperation, trade, entrepreneurship ... Despite its ultra contemporary connotations, these terms actually have their roots in May 68 pavers and are the result of thirty years in the business literature. This is one of the contradictions and paradoxes that we face when properly interpret these words: if on one hand, constitute the business world's response to the movement against the mechanization of work and life driven from the seventies - what Boltanski Chiapello and call "artistic critique" (2) - Current use more global escapes criticism to which they were associated-that Chiapello and Boltanski called "social criticism": the functioning of the market economy as a whole.
"These topics, the texts of the movement in May 1968 were accompanied by a radical critique of capitalism (and in particular a critique of exploitation) and the announcement of its impending end, in the literature of the new management, is are somewhat fragmented, made up as targets and fend for themselves in the service of the forces that once tried to destroy. "(3)
Drawing Pernan Goñi for my paper .
This content, which is also supported in the development of two new funding sources. First, the capabilities subjective workers' abilities that have hitherto been left out of the business logic.
"The new devices which require a total commitment and support in a more sophisticated ergonomics, integrating the contributions of behaviorist psychology and cognitive science, and to some extent precisely because they are more human, more also penetrate deep within people, which is expected to "give up" their work by making possible a manipulation of human beings precisely what makes them human itself. "(4)
And secondly Instead, exploiting the capabilities of the entire social fabric, which happens to be understood as a "watershed creative" and which actors relate to the Company based on flows, meetings, exchanges and connections, temporary and informal. If knowledge flows freely in social and technological networks, only to develop appropriate mechanisms to capture it and turn it into capital. Since then, the exploitation of workers' subjectivity is evil, especially when you consider that historically has accompanied a decline in real working conditions (job insecurity, temporary loss of power of trade unions, etc.). . But intelligence It is even more collective.
Through mechanisms such as crowd-sourcing, for example, are socialized processes of product design, communication, strengthening the idea of \u200b\u200bbrand control, customer satisfaction or even distribution, but the economic benefits , materials and actual impact on the same river but stay creative and managed privately. The reasoning behind this profound way of seeing things is the same as advocated in the eighteenth century father of modern economics, Adam Smith: that wealth always produces economic and social wealth spontaneously. The recent financial crisis years, coupled with increased social inequality and the worsening environmental conditions, have shown that once Smith was right in the new millennium and no. That despite this, we continue to base our model of growth in its ideas, is another paradox.
To address this tension between private interests and collective welfare, we use another concept, as in previous cases, came for a purpose very different from those for which it currently relies : the commons. Conceived originally as part of altermondialistes movements and open source, the "commons" has been traditionally understood as a paradigm for one, communally managed common resources (be they of a material such as natural or intangible as knowledge), and two, to respond conceptually to the emergence of a "third space power" , halfway between the public and the market would limit abusive conduct either on the same commons. (5)
In the hands of management, however, the commons is associated with the work methods (open or transparent) and, occasionally, with the application domain license to documents generated in these processes. As critical dimension of its dual with respect to public and private sector, is solved by moving all its potential subversive to the dismantling of the public (in all its facets: economic deregulation, loss of social, institutional vacuum, discrediting the civil service, etc .) and silencing criticism of the corporate sector and the privatization of the commons. In practice, another paradox, we have reached a situation in which the term is used interchangeably commons, both to refer to social transformation projects (aimed at improving living conditions for greater equity and sustainability.) and business innovation (new business models, open business, etc..), although the objectives of one another are almost always antagonistic.
But the real problem is not that is a fiction, but fiction is a celebratory, who imagines herself in a scene of abundance and well-being that does not correspond with reality. Future trends for all developed countries point to an increase in precarious living conditions of materials, energy dependence, the aging of the population, the dismantling of the welfare policies and health services, deteriorating job quality, the loss of purchasing power, debt and the privatization of education, among others. That is, picking up Maslow's terminology, if we are still in the top range of the pyramid - where, once satisfied the needs of a material and emotional, we have to face the realization, creativity, tolerance and problem solving- may not be for long. Because of energy resources, without a middle class with their material needs met, without a quality education system accessible to all of society, without effective public infrastructures ... that is, without certain structural conditions, this great project for Economics Knowledge is physically impossible.
innovation policies take into account these circumstances, of course, but only as a backdrop. And this is the paradox: if we do not solve these problems are not going to keep doing business, but these problems are not solved by business. Everything else is mistaken, something like being in the sinking of the Titanic playing mus and with the orchestra playing.
** (1) VVAA, "the new economy sectors. 20 +20 ", published by the Escuela de Organización Industrial (EOI) in collaboration with MIK Mondragon 2010. Digital Paper http://www.eoi.es/savia
(2) Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, "The New Spirit of Capitalism," Akal 2002. You can read the introduction: http://es.scribd.com/doc/7240021/Boltanski-y-Chiapello-El-Nuevo-Espiritu-Del-Capitalismo-Introduccion
(3) Luc Boltanski and Chiapello Eve, op. cit.
(4) Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, op. cit.
(5) "International Conference on commons. Report in English " . Berlin, 2010. **
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