This is a problem for academics, policy makers and anyone trying to apply innovation to their company. It probably isn't a problem for the industry of business books about innovation, as the confusion and overreaching probably serves that particular group well. But if you're actually trying to improve the performance and outcomes of companies and countries this is a real issue.
The dominant narrative for innovation is that it is uniformly good. Innovation, simplified as the introduction of new products or services, is a move forward, the arrow of progress taking us forward. Now here is where the first wrinkle comes in - some 'definitions' of innovation wedge in the word 'successful' (for example the 2008 UK government Innovation Nation paper). So something isn't an innovation unless it is successful, and the definition of successful is left as an exercise for the reader.
Macro policy talks of policy in these terms of successful introduction but the measurement of innovation takes a completely different position. The questionnaire for the 6th Community Innovation Survey carried out in 2009 uses this definition of innovation -
Innovation, for the purpose of this survey, is defined as new or significantly improved goods or services and/or the processes used to produce or supply all goods or services, that the business has introduced, regardless of their origin. These may be new to the business or new to the market.
So from the policy analyst or academic perspective (the results of the survey are used by academics to write many papers) innovation becomes something simpler or softer, as the criterion is new to either the business or the market. The approach here says nothing about whether the new product or service is successful, it just asks whether it is new. The questionnaire does go on to ask how the revenue of the company depends on new products, but this is not the same as the macro 'successful'.
Now don't get me wrong I'm as up for positive change, for improvements in technology and institutions, as the next policy wonk. I don't want to rip out the computers and to head back to the land without access to indoor plumbing or my treasured mobile phone.
I'm really concerned though that in painting innovation, in its broadest sense, as all change, always positive, that we're clouding the issues we really need to face. Specifically, how do we achieve growth that is sustainable and equitable? Because that slippery little 'successful' doesn't clarify who is benefiting. Is it just the company and its increased market share, or is it consumers getting a truly better product, or the national economy having increased GDP?
And here's the reason that this probably becomes too complex. When we talk about innovation it will have different meanings, processes and impacts depending on what country you're in, whether you're talking about technology companies or publicly provided healthcare. There cannot be one conversation or one narrative that encompasses productive changes in all of these contexts.
If you were very cynical you could say that the macro definition of innovation, the one that includes the successful rider, is self proving - by enforcing the criterion of successful you are by definition focusing on something that is positive.
So what may be a small step towards making innovation as a term have more bite again is to admit that some changes, some new products and services are negative for some stakeholders. I'm not asking for a measurement of that positive/negative balance, but at least to recognise that some of what we currently talk of as being innovation is marketing fluff at least or sometimes damaging would be an interesting change.
I'm sure some of you would agree that we could have done with a lot less financial innovation over the past decades.
Best
Finbarr
You are right about broken narratives of innovation. Benoît Godin has described some policy uses of innovation narratives (see this paper, for instance: http://www.csiic.ca/PDF/TheMakingOfScience.pdf ). In technology transfer, we see this all the time in the form of "process" documents and "success stories". The first purport to show "how technology transfer works", the result being "innovation" and everything good. The second confirms the first by selecting and recasting events to conform to the process guidance. Generally, both narratives recite the Linear Model--basic research leads to applied research, and from there to product development, income (including licensing income as a proxy for success), and jobs.
ReplyDeleteThis is a case of narrative deception. Once there is a favored event--a big royalty check, say--then it is generally possible to construct a narrative that traces back to some research event (such as an invention, or government grant) and then tells a story forward. Such a narrative, by being simple and confirming prevailing policy, works to exclude other narratives, ones that might actually inform practice. I showed recently how this kind of narrative manipulation happened in one of the most famous of US academic inventions, warfarin.
The worst thing is that policy makers come to believe these stories of innovation that are constructed backward and then told forward. They then attempt to write policy to make these simplistic narratives happen more frequently and efficiently--for which they should hire better writers of fiction rather than make more rules about patent ownership and technology marketing.
We reason much more effectively from experience, including our imagination of possible future experience, than from aspirations attached to an abstraction like "innovation". "Innovation" as a rhetorical device, a figure of thought, appears indeed to stand (now) for everything good that comes by way of (market, technology, social) change, while excluding if not banishing the bad. As a policy device, it has proven successful in shifting around funds in government budgets--and thus has currency as an effective tool to gain political power, a point not lost on the academic research industry. But it's a lousy way to make policy about community change, or technology change, or prosperity--based on reasoning from a figure of thought rather than from experience on the ground, gained in practice.
Gerry thanks for the comments and the references. Godin's work is definitely leading here and is strongly referenced by others I've been discussing this with.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting you mirror this into tech transfer, as I've just had a masters student complete a project looking at unrecognised biases for the main actors in university spin outs, from the academic founders, through the tech transfer officers, and on to the first external funders. We're in the process of writing it up but let me know if it would be of interest to you. It's based on discussions with 2 of the three stakeholders for each of 8 examples of companies coming out of Oxford and Cambridge.
Best
Finbarr