2. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
DISCOURSES IN INNOVATION 1:
DISCLOSING THE (K)NEW:
LEARNING, SKILL ACQUISITION AND THE
PRODUCTIVIST LIMITS OF INNOVATION THEORY
3. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
METHODS AND PROCESSES
IMAGINATION, BODY, MATERIALITY
6. If there‟s one thing that we want to do in this course it is to smash this
romanticist and Cartesian illusion that “innovation” happens in the head
– however literally or metaphorically – of some uniquely gifted or
talented individual who exists in isolation form that world of which they
are a part, and all of those “practices,” or even more appropriately,
that community of practitioners who - however acknowledgedly or
unacknoweldgedly – inform what they do, and all of those various
semiotic, linguistic, material, economic, social, cultural, political, and
cognitive systems that similarly inform them as well.
7. in novation
“Innovation” exists in our skillful adaptive relationships to those environments in which we exist….
8. in novation
… our relationships to each other in those environments….
9. in novation
… and those materials that constitute those environments….
10. … the objects or tools that we make with those materials that then further facilitate our
relationships to those environments…
11. in novation
… and even more specifically in those “communities of practice” that provide us with the
requisite skills to do all of these things!
12. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
DISCOURSES IN INNOVATION 1:
DISCLOSING THE (K)NEW:
LEARNING, SKILL ACQUISITION AND THE
PRODUCTIVIST LIMITS OF INNOVATION THEORY
13. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
METHODS AND PROCESSES
IMAGINATION, BODY, MATERIALITY
14. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
METHODS AND PROCESSES
IMAGINATION, BODY, MATERIALITY
16. Open Ontology/Enactivist Epistemology/PoeticPraxeology
The world in which we exist can only be truly understood – let alone
“innovated” for – according to the “logic” of complex systems theory, second
order cybernetics, emergence, and an enactive, embodied, or dynamic
understanding of the nature of cognition or mind, or what he specifically calls
an “open” as opposed to a “closed” ontology, an “enactivist” as opposed to a
“representationalist” epistemology, and a “poetic” as opposed to an
“Intrumentalist” praxeology.
17. Open Ontology/Enactivist Epistemology/Poetic Praxeology
“An open-world ontology assumes that the world is always in a process of
becoming, of turning into something different. Flow, flux, and change are the
fundamental processes of the world. The future is open, unknowable in principle,
and it always holds the possibility of surprise.”
“An enactivist epistemology assumes that knowing is action. We bring the world
forward by making distinctions and giving form to an unarticulated background
of understanding. Knowledge is the outcome of an active knower who has a
certain biological structure, follows certain historically shaped cognitive practices,
and is rooted within a consensual domain and sociocultural practice.”
“A poetic praxeology sees the practitioner as an active being who, while
inevitably shaped by the sociocultural practices in which he/she is rooted,
necessarily shapes them in turn by undertaking action that is relatively opaque in
its consequences and unclear in its motives and desires, unreflective and situated
in its mode of operation, but inherently capable of self-observation and reflexivity,
thus susceptible to chronic change.”
Tsoukas, Haridimos. 2005. Complex Knowledge. Studies in Organizational Epistemology. New York. Oxford University Press. P 5
18. The world is not an absolute, stable, pre-determined, and “re-
presentable” thing that exists outside of or beyond our
perceptions and understandings of it, but is rather in a
constant state of, “flux, flow, and change,” that is
simultaneously affected by our “enactive” participation in it,
and our “poetic” disclosure of it.
20. Cognitive science is waking up to the full importance of the realization
that perception does not consist In the recovery of a pre-given world,
but rather in the perceptual guidance of action in a world that is
inseparable from our sensorimotor capacities, and that “higher"
cognitive structures also emerge from patterns of perceptually guided
action. Thus cognition consists not of representations but of embodied
action. Thus we can say that the world we know is not pre-given; it is,
rather, enacted through our history of structural coupling, and the
temporal hinges that articulate enaction are rooted in the number of
alternative rnicroworlds that are activated in every situation. These
alternatives are the source of both common sense and creativity in
cognition.
Varela, Francisco. 1999. Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition. Stanford University Press.
21. This “epistemic shift” toward a more “open,” “enactive,” and
“praxeological” understanding of the nature of our existence
has been influenced by a number of different sources
besides Varela‟s “neurophenomenological” amalgamation
of his and Humbeto Maturana‟s insights into the
neurophysiological nature and structure of our systems of
perception and cognition and phenomenological
philosophy and these include…
22. Pheonomenology/Pragmatism/Cybernetics/Systems Theory
William James - January 11, 1842 – August 26, Heinz Von Foerster born November 13, 1911 –
1910 October 2, 2002
Henri Bergson born, 8 October 1859 – 4 January Stephen Toulmin - 25 March 1922 - 4 December
1941 2009
John Dewey – born October 20, 1859 – June 1, Stafford Beer – born September 25, 1926 - August
1952 23, 2002
Alfred North Whitehead born 15 February 1861 – Humberto Maturana September 14, 1928 –
30 December 1947
Alasdair Macintyre - 12 January 1929
Ludwig Wittgenstein - born 26 April 1889 – 29
April 1951 Richard Rorty – born October 4, 1931 – June 8,
2007
Michael Polanyi - March 11, 1891 – February 22,
1976 George Lakoff - May 24, 1941
Martin Heidegger - born September 26, 1889 – Francisco Varela - September 7, 1946 – May 28,
May 26, 1976 2001
Hans-Georg Gadamer - born February 11, 1900 – Charles Taylor - born 28 January 1948
March 13, 2002
Gregory Bateson – born 9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980
25. “Truth” – or perhaps even more appropriately – what we know, or can
come to know, is produced in practice.
That is through our active participation in a world –what Heidegger
called our “being-in-the-world” – that we “hermeneutically” or
interpretively disclose or produce – i.e. “enact” - as Gadamer
suggested, and consensually agree upon and act within as Dewey
claimed.
Facts that have been even more “empirically” validated in recent
years through the likes of Bateson‟s and Von Forester‟s research into the
organizational nature and structure of those systems in which we exist –
whether social, cultural, economic, or cognitive - and are inextricably
“structurally coupled” to as Maturana and Varela claim.
29. “The use of the experiment for the purpose of knowledge was already
the consequence of the conviction that one can only know what he
has made himself, for this conviction meant that one might learn about
those things man did not make by figuring out and imitating the process
through which they had come into being.”
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. p295
30. Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana
Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living.
31. Purpose or aims, however, as we saw in the first chapter, are not features
of the organization of any machine (allo- or autopoietic); these notions
belong to the domain of our discourse about our actions, that is, they
belong to the domain of descriptions, and when applied to a machine,
or any system independent from us, they reflect our considering the
machine or system in some encompassing context.
Maturana, Humberto and Varela, Francisco. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living,
Dordrecht: D. Reidel
33. ”it is only because man first grasps himself as archi-tect, as initiator of
fabrication, that nature can in turn appear to him as moved by the
mechanisms of cause and effect.”
“it is only because the artisan experiences the origin of production as
indigenous to himself, he finds another such origin in nature, concordant
with although allogeneous to his own.”
“The experience that guides the comprehension of origin as it is operative
in the „philosophy of nature‟ is thus paradoxically the experiencing of
fabricating tools and works of art, the experience of handiwork.”
Shurmann, Reiner. Heidegger on Being and Acting from Principles to Anarchy. Indiana University Press. Bloomington
35. It “creation” means anything, it is the exact opposite of any form of
production in the sense of a fabrication that supposes a given, a
project, and a producer. The idea of creation, such as has been
elaborated by the most diverse and at the same time most convergent
thoughts… is above all the idea of the ex nihilo [out of nothing]. The
world is created from nothing: this does not mean fabricated with
nothing by a particularly ingenious producer. It means instead that it is
not fabricated, produced by no producer, and not even coming out of
nothing (like a miraculous apparition), but in quite a strict manner and
more challenging for thought: the nothing itself, if one can speak in this
way, or rather nothing grows as something…In creation, a growth grows
from nothing and this nothing takes care of itself, cultivates its growth.
Nancy, J-L, (2007)The Creation of the World or Globalization. Trans. Raffoul, F & Pettigrew, D. Albany, State
University of New York Press. P 51
36.
37. As much as we might have intellectually realized the enormous ontological and
epistemological significance of these insights – insights that, whether in the
physical sciences or philosophy we have, in many instances, been aware of for
over a hundred years! – we have as yet to recognize the full implications of their
significance within the machinations of our everyday lives. That is in the ways in
which we actually come to know, learn, teach, and act within - or more
importantly for our current purposes, design or “innovate” within - this world of
which we are all a part, and actively, or even more appropriately, “enactively,”
contribute to the construction of.
There is an absolutely massive disconnect between what in a few weeks time
we will see Donald Schön and Chris Argyris call our “espoused theories” and our
“theories-in-use.” Or what we can even more simply describe as those
fundamental beliefs and practices that actually inform what we do and those
that we claim to inform what we do.
42. Complex- Collective – Collaborative – Emergent – Enactive
theorisations of the nature of cultural production, organization, meaning, or “innovation”
Leadbeater – Anderson – Taleb – Tapscott and Williams
44. Peggy Kamuf – “Accounterability in Higher Education”
45. “First, I note the assumption that, according to this statement, my
university education ought to have been a preparation for the global,
competitive workforce. This is not said in so many words, but that
would be precisely what signals it as an unexamined assumption. I do
not share this assumption and my university experience has, I believe,
been the richer for it; moreover I believe this despite the fact that, in
another sense, I am now far poorer because my parents refused to
continue subsidizing my studies ever since I changed my major to the
Programme in Critical Thinking. No doubt like the author of these
assertions, they were willing to invest in my university degree only so
long as I promised an appreciable return of marketable skills.
Nevertheless, I believe that my program of study, and this will be my
second point, has definitely enhanced my „capability and capacity
to think and develop and continue to learn‟, aims that, I agree,
should motivate university teaching, learning, and research”
46.
47. Innovation in Practice Pilot 2010
DISCOURSES IN INNOVATION 1:
DISCLOSING THE (K)NEW:
LEARNING, SKILL ACQUISITION AND THE
PRODUCTIVIST LIMITS OF INNOVATION THEORY
48. DISCOURSES IN INNOVATION 1: DISCLOSING THE (K)NEW:
LEARNING, SKILL ACQUISITION AND THE PRODUCTIVIST LIMITS OF INNOVATION THEORY
• General Introduction and course overview.
• Innovation as Creative Destruction – Schumpeter and Beyond.
• Innovation as „History Making‟ - Ontological Design and the disclosure of the
(k)new.
• Innovation and „Expertise‟” - Hubert Dreyfus and the „tacit‟ nature of „skillful‟
innovation.
• Innovation in „Practice‟ – The „tacit‟ knowledge of innovatory practice. Flores,
Schon, and Nonaka.
• Innovative Change – Stephen Turner and the “object” of transformative „practice.
• Innovation and Systemic Change – Open Source Innovation, Distributed Mind,
and the Economy of Contribution.
• Summation, Critical Review and Essay Planning
49. “Innovation as Creative Destruction – Schumpeter and Beyond”.
In this first lecture we will consider of some of the key ways in which innovation
has come to be understood, both practically, conceptually, and critically
through out its development. We will place particular emphasis on the way in
which it has been articulated within the discourses of economics, business,
organisation, and management theory, from Joseph Schumpeter‟s original
analysis of it as “creative destruction” through to Henry Chesbrough‟s most
recent ideas on “open innovation”.
52. Innovation as „History Making‟ - Ontological Design
and the disclosure of the (k)new
This lecture seeks to expand on our understanding of design‟s essentially
“inventive,” “innovative,” or what we will call its “ontologically disclosive” nature.
The principle inspiration for this re-reading of the nature of innovation is Hubert
Dreyfus, Fernando Flores, and Charles Spinosa‟s hermeneutically and
phenomenologically inspired reading of it in their text, Disclosing New Worlds.
Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity. We will
also discuss the basic underlying philosophical premises of this work.
53. Hubert Dreyfus, Fernando Flores, and Charles Spinosa
Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity
54. Innovation and „Expertise‟” - Hubert Dreyfus and the „tacit‟ nature of
„skillful‟ innovation‟.
This next lecture seeks to expand our understanding of what “tacit” knowledge
is by focusing not only on Hubert Dreyfus‟ analysis of its importance to his more
philosophically orientated critique of the nature of “cognition” or “intelligence”,
but even more specifically his analysis of its role in “skill acquisition”, learning,
and the development of the sort of “expertise” that is essential to innovation.
Michael Polanyi‟s original definition and analysis of the concept will also be
considered.
58. Innovation in „Practice‟ – The „tacit‟ knowledge of
innovatory practice.
Flores, Schon, and Nonaka
In this next lecture we will seek to further explicate how these ideas
have not only been directly applied to the discourse and practices of
innovation theory through the work of individuals like Fernando Flores,
but also to the discourses of Education, Learning, and Organisation
and Management Theory, through the work of Donald Schon, Chris
Argyris, and Ikujiro Nonaka.
62. “Innovative Change – Stephen Turner and the “object” of
transformative „practice‟”.
In this next lecture we will seek to further consider some of the more essential
critical or philosophical questions about the nature of how “tacit” knowledge
is actually transmitted, communicated, learnt, or acquired through those
“practices” that we share. Stephen Turner‟s critique of the supposedly
“collective” and “objective” nature of that knowledge that we “tacitly” share
through our mutual co-option and adoption of shared “practices” leads
directly into some of the key themes of the following analysis of the
“distributed” nature of intelligence, “skill”, “expertise”, and “practice” that
have been so important to the development of many of the most recent
theories of “open source” innovation
64. Innovation and Systemic Change – Open Source Innovation, Distributed
Mind, and the Economy of Contribution
Having considered Turner‟s analysis and critique of the supposedly
“collective” and “objective” nature of that “tacit” knowledge that we
acquire through our mutual co-option and adoption of shared “practices”,
this final lecture seeks to outline how some of the implications of this critique
of the way in which that “innovative” knowledge that we “tacitly” acquire
through those “practices” that we share has affected the development of
some of the most recent theorisations of “open source” innovation that were
briefly outlined in the introductory lecture. Some of the social, cultural,
political, economic, and ethical implications of this model of innovation will
also be considered – particularly as they relate to what Bernard Stiegler has
recently described as the “economy of contribution”.
