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INNOVATION THEORY AND MODELS

INNOVATION THEORY AND MODELS

Claes Andersson
With
Petter Törnberg and Anton Törnberg

Insite Project

May 09, 2014
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  1. INNOVATION THEORY AND
    MODELS
    Claes Andersson
    With
    Petter Törnberg and Anton Törnberg

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  2. Activities
    • Theoretical work – INSITE and MD
    • Workshop series
     March 21-23 2012 ”Innovation, society and complexity: a dynamics of
    detecting, solving and creating problems”
     March 18-22 2013 “Transition and stasis in society and biology: models,
    theories and narratives”
     May 4-8 2014: “New data – old theories: the future of theorizing about
    innovation in complex adaptive systems”
    This workshop series has attracted a large number of top people from
    a variety of disciplines interested in innovation from a variety of
    disciplines.

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  3. Insight of INSITE
    Innovation is a highly general type of dynamics!
    Innovation in complex adaptive systems
    (e.g. biology, social systems, cognition...)
    Considerable general scientific interest
    Broad potential impact: INSITE has been important
    for getting the community to think more about this!

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  4. A general view of innovation
    We need new theory - why?
    We need it to understand aspects of innovation
    that are important for INSITE’s purposes...
    Old theory is not enough

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  5. Intriguing times for innovation
    research
    New data and new questions
    Friction with old theories!
    Old theories:
    • Fail to address sustainability issues (social science)
    • Are undermined by all this new data (biology,archaeology)

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  6. New takes on innovation across
    several fields
    In particular we have looked at (in addition to INSITE in-house stuff):
    • Developmental evolutionary theory
    • Transition research/Technical change theory
    Why? Because they contain important insights into innovation on a general level...
    Insights that go very well together with the theoretical base that went into INSITE
    New connection between biology and social science:
    • Focus on process and organization
    • Meeting half-ways
    • Biology not at all obviously only a donor of models this time

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  7. The main ingredients
    • Exaptive bootstrapping (E.g. Lane 2011)
    • Generative Entrenchment (E.g. Wimsatt and Griesemer 2007)
    • Multi-Level Perspective/Technical Change
    Theory (e.g. Geels and Schot 2007)
    A provisional developmental model for cultural
    change on the evolutionary time scale
    (Andersson, Törnberg and Törnberg 2014)
    • Lane, D. A. (2011). Complexity and Innovation Dynamics. In C. Antonelli (Ed.), Handbook on the Economic Complexity of Technological Change (pp. 63–80).
    Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Wimsatt, W. C., & Griesemer, J. R. (2007). Reproducing Entrenchments to Scaffold Culture: The Central Role of Development in Cultural Evolution. In R.
    Sansom & R. N. Brandon (Eds.), Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice (pp. 227–323). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    • Geels, F., & Schot, J. (2007). Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways. Research Policy, 36(3), 399–417.
    • Andersson, C., Törnberg, A., & Törnberg, P. (2014). An Evolutionary Developmental Approach to Cultural Evolution. Current Anthropology, 55(2), 154–174.

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  8. Agent-Artifact Space
    • Agents and Artifacts linked – a network
    • Change propagates in the network
    • Cascades of reconfigurations
    • Innovation triggers innovation

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  9. Exaptive Bootstrapping
    E.g. Lane (2011) describes innovation in this Agent-Artifact
    space is described as Exaptive Bootstrapping; a five-step cycle:
    1. New artifact types are designed to achieve some particular attribution of
    functionality.
    2. Organizational transformations are constructed to proliferate the use of tokens of
    the new type.
    3. Novel patterns of human interaction emerge around these artifacts in use.
    4. New attributions of functionality are generated – by participants or observers –
    to describe what the participants in these interactions are obtaining or might
    obtain from them.
    5. New artifacts are conceived and designed to instantiate the new attributed
    functionality.
    #1=#5 – It’s a bootstrapping cycle

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  10. Structured space
    • Heterogenous and structured
    • Links differ in type and strength
    • There are clusters, hierarchy etc.:
    Agents and artifacts entangled within
    and across levels of organization and
    abstraction

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  11. Hierarchy #1 - Regimes
    • Regimes: heterogeneous tangles of
    structures and institutions
    • Hierarchically nested
    • E.g. Automobility, computers, animal
    management.
    Automobility, for instance, is tangled up with ideological,
    technological and economical factors – stake holders with a
    range of interaction modes (competing, symbiotic,
    commensalist, parasitic, etc.)
    Major Regimes: strongly
    tied to the Core system
    Minor Regimes: more in-
    dependent of the Core system

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  12. Hierarchy #2: Generative Entrenchment
    Changes cascade through the system:
    change in central elements have larger
    cascades
    Change is more likely to be preserved
    the ”better” its effect is.
    Changes near the Core have lower
    likelyhood of having a net beneficial
    effect
    This is because they have more
    dependent downstream elements
    The Core will have inertia and the
    periphery will be more flexible
    The Core is Entrenched
    Design
    Core
    Edifice
    Qualitative
    Flexibility
    Inertia
    Design Space
    Quantitative

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  13. Flexibility because of inertia – and the
    other way around
    Central elements (nuts & bolts, general ideas, components...) define design spaces
    More peripheral elements have more the character of being designs in design spaces
    Sociotechnical systems are thereby flexible and inert at the same time
    The innovation society generates a profusion of innovation: but not ANY innovation!
    Notably: it is incapable of mopping up all the negative side effects of the profusion of
    innovations that it causes!
    The innovation society is entrenched: it is part of a design space within which we
    devise our solutions

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  14. The Core
    The innovation society is part of what we call
    The Core
    An entrenched tangle of Regimes that make up
    ”a way of life” – a prevalent design space
    Innovation is subordinated to the pace set by
    this Core

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  15. Transition: changing Cores
    Transition – and stasis – are evolutionary phenomena:
    Macroscopic patterns of unfolding
    Conceived as the replacement of an Old Core by a New Core
    Prodromal Bootstrapping Entrenchment
    Old Core New Core

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  16. Prodromal phase – setting the scene
    Minor Regimes: Covering for the Core – things at the side that cover for things
    that it cannot really deal with... (social innovation?)
    Substrate: A ”soup” of Minor Regimes that survive in important but marginal
    niches... Where they are refined.
    The Prodromal Phase may be mistaken as a gradual accumulation of
    the New Core – it is not!
    We rely on the Core – changing it generates destructive cascades.
    But the substrate undermines it...
    Prodromal Bootstrapping Entrenchment
    Old Core New Core

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  17. Bootstrapping Phase #1
    Push – Pull: Two things needed for transition...
    1) A Substrate of refined Minor Regimes that provide the
    embryo of an alternative
    2) A destabilized Old Core: by the Substrate, by an accumulation
    of negative by-effects of its innovations, by external events...
    Prodromal Bootstrapping Entrenchment
    Old Core New Core

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  18. Bootstrapping Phase #2
    Once this happens – the Old Core no longer sets the pace!
    Innovation reaches the Core – to a large extent by building upon the
    Substrate of Minor Regimes...
    But also by re-organizing fragments of the Old Core into new roles!
    Cascades of profound innovation on a level that constructs new major design
    spaces
    Prodromal Bootstrapping Entrenchment
    Old Core New Core

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  19. Entrenchment Phase
    Prodromal Bootstrapping Entrenchment
    Old Core New Core
    A New Core takes shape...
    The more that gets constructed on top of it...
    ...and the more refined it becomes...
    The more Generatively Entrenched it becomes

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