Category: disruptive

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Science and technology has become less innovative and disruptive in the last decades

A highly interesting paper revealing the decline in the level of innovativeness and disruptiveness in science (and patents) since 1950. This recently published paper in Nature is based on a study of an extensive body of 45+ million papers and suggets “across fields, we find that science and technology are becoming less disruptive.” (p 139)
“Relying on narrower slices of knowledge benefits individual careers, but not scientific progress more generally.” (p 143)

What does this mean for our funding agencies, our universities as supposed places of innovation, and academia in general?

The authors suggest some ways out of this development (p 143f):

  • scholars may be encouraged to read widely and
  • given time to keep up with the rapidly expanding knowledge frontier.
  • Universities may forgo the focus on quantity, and more strongly reward research quality, and
  • perhaps more fully subsidize year-long sabbaticals.
  • Federal agencies may invest in the riskier and longer-term individual awards that support careers and not simply specific projects,
  • giving scholars the gift of time needed to step outside the fray,
  • inoculate themselves from the publish or perish culture, and produce truly consequential work.

I would like to add:

  • interdisciplinary cooperation that is truly interdisciplinary (in the sense of integrating and synthesizing premises from different disciplines and cultures of thought). Innovation often happens at the edges and intersections of fields/disciplines.
  • engage in a mode of co-creation, co-becoming, correspondence (Ingold), and “thinGing” (Malafouris) with the world, leading to
  • assuming a more humble attitude of openness and a mindset of listening and of being led by the creativity of the world (see also Peschl (2019, 2020, 2022))

Park, M., Leahey, E., & Funk, R. J. (2023). Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Nature, 613, 138–144. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x

Thank you Thomas Grisold for pointing me to this paper

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On the “creativity”​ of AI — Preliminary critical remarks

Praise for the creative capabilities of recent developments in AI technologies is ubiquitous in the media and relevant blogs.

Although really astonishing (as an example, have a look here [and the examples in the article]), creating novel ideas by using AI seems to have intrinsic limitations.

To us humans, these results sometimes seem really “creative”, “novel”, or surprising. However this is mainly due to the limitations in our own imagination, which is simply not capable of processing such huge amounts of data.

In essence, AI’s creativity is the result of hyper-complex processes of learning and adaptation that is based on an almost endless ocean of data/”knowledge” (without meaning). This has several implications concerning the underlying premises of such an AI-driven understanding of creativity and bringing forth novelty:

  1. These systems are based almost exclusively on already existing knowledge. Hence, their learning algorithms apply a strategy of learning from the past.
  2. This leads to a form of creativity that is grounded in the idea of (re-)combining already existing concepts/things. This is an accepted and valid strategy well known from creativity and innovation research. However, we have to keep in mind, that the results will remain in the realm of the predictable, or, from a Kuhnian perspective, within the paradigm of what already exists.
  3. It is a purely “brain/mind-based” form of creativity that does not take into account the world and its potentials (e.g., affordances) as a possible source of novelty (e.g., by interacting and engaging with it).

If we are interested in really “ground breaking”, radical, or disruptive innovations, these strategies will not suffice. As we show in our research, we will have to follow a strategy of Emergent Innovation, “Learning from the future and future potentials as they emerge” as well as acquire futures skills and a perspective on innovation that is grounded in an enactive understanding of cognition.

Will AI be able to sense the future by learning from it, its affordances and potentials, and from interacting with and enacting its environment?

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Innovation vs. disruption: Shifting our focus from disrupting markets to creating them

Greg Satell shows in a recent post why it is necessary to rethink our obsession with disruptive innovation and replace it with a mindset of profound innovation. Such a shift is based on value creation for “real” human needs as well as on scientific knowledge rather than on a strategy of disrupting existing markets by increasing returns of a few large companies with almost no increase of productivity.

see: https://marker.medium.com/how-the-uber-economy-is-killing-innovation-prosperity-and-entrepreneurship-7222982cd457

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Inflation of innovation (Ö1 Dimensionen)

Die Inflation der Innovation

Das Neue und seine wortreiche Verhinderung
Von Mariann Unterluggauer

Ö1 Dimensionen | Radiosendung  | April 26, 2021

Seit den 1970er Jahren, ist die Anzahl an Innovationen gesunken, sagen Ökonomen. Diese Feststellung ist aus zweierlei Gründen weniger erstaunlich, als man vermutet könnte: Erstens nahm die Anzahl der Jobs, bei denen nichts produziert aber viel geredet wird, in der vergangenen Jahrzehnten zu. Und zweitens ist es gar nicht so leicht, mit einer Innovation Gewinne zu erzielen. Profit aber ist die Maßeinheit für Innovation – ob sie nun technisch, grün, transformativ oder disruptiv genannt wird.

Auf jeden Fall müsse Innovation weh tun, lautet ein Credo von Investoren in den USA. Und vorteilhaft wäre, fordert man in Europa, wenn sie auch an den Universitäten gelehrt würde. Klar ist, schnell muss es immer gehen: gestern entwickelt, heute am Markt. Sieht man sich innovative Lösungen aber genauer an, dann haben sie nur selten etwas mit Geschwindigkeit zu tun.

Häufiger schon mit fantastischen Wortkreationen, denn mit neuen Begriffen lassen sich auch alte Ideen verschleiern und verkaufen. Und bei all dem rhetorischen Dauerhype ums Neue wird dann auf reale Anstrengungen und notwendige Investitionen gerne vergessen. Kein Wunder also, dass das „Konzept Innovation“ nun kritisch hinterfragt und mancherorts überarbeitet wird.

→ Link zu Sendung (©/mit freundlicher Genehmigung: Mariann Unterluggauer [for educational purposes only])

 

English Version:

The inflation of innovation
The new and its eloquent prevention
By Mariann Unterluggauer

Since the 1970s, the number of innovations has declined, economists say. This finding is less surprising than one might suspect, for two reasons: First, the number of jobs that produce nothing but talk a lot has increased in recent decades. And second, it is not at all easy to make a profit with an innovation. But profit is the measure of innovation – whether it is called technical, green, transformative or disruptive.

In any case, innovation has to hurt, is a credo of investors in the USA. And it would be beneficial, they say in Europe, if it were also taught at universities. It’s clear that things always have to happen quickly: developed yesterday, on the market today. But if you take a closer look at innovative solutions, they rarely have anything to do with speed.

More often, they have to do with fantastic word creations, because new terms can be used to disguise and sell old ideas. And with all the rhetorical hype about the new, real efforts and necessary investments are often forgotten. No wonder, then, that the “concept of innovation” is now being critically scrutinized and revised in some places.

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Emergent Innovation: From innovation as extrapolating from the past to learning from the future as it emerges

How do we want to innovate in the next 10 years? What does innovation mean in an exponential and digital (platform) economy and how are we dealing with an uncertain and almost unpredictable and complex future as we are experiencing it right now? How can we bring about innovations „with purpose“, that “make sense”, that are sustainable and have a positive impact?

Most of our innovations are driven by past experiences these days, as this seems to be the only “solid” source that we can rely on. We will show, however, we can go beyond this strategy by tapping into future potentials leading us the way to “learning from the future as it emerges”.

http://www.thelivingcore.com/en/innovation-strategies-part-1/

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Innovation from within: Why meaning and purpose are essential in Emergent Innovation

Emergent innovation uses the future as its origin and is based on a deep knowledge of the subject of innovation. A profound understanding of the innermost core of the innovation subject (and its potentials) helps us to see what seeks to evolve or emerge from it. This approach of “learning from the future as it emerges” is based on a number of fundamental premises of innovation: most importantly, innovation must emerge “from the inside out;” it must have a paramount purpose (“why”) and meaning (“what”); and anyone involved must “embrace” reality and be open to personal change.

For further details see: https://www.thelivingcore.com/en/meaning-purpose-innovation-from-within/