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23.01.08

Presenting Emergent Innovation at lift conference

I attended the lift-conference already last year and found the mix of people, ideas, projects and “enablers” (such as the cheese fondue) very good. This year, I convinced Markus Peschl, a colleague with whom I develop a new approach to radical innovation (hence “emergent innovation”), to present our work at one of the many formats the organisers offer. We started late, but we currently we are in good position to make it into one of the slots. Maybe, someone wants to support us, then please give us a vote.

From our proposition:
The fascinating aspect of “real” radical innovations does not primarily lie in their manifestations as entirely new services or products; what is of interest are rather the “mental innovations” and the “organically grown”, yet radically new forms and processes of knowledge (creation) having led to these manifestations. How can they be brought about?

We are proposing an alternative approach and knowledge technology to (radical) innovation (having been developed by M.Peschl and T.Fundneider): emergent innovation and enabling spaces.

Sometimes, (radical) innovation is the result of a brilliant idea which came up by chance. In most cases, however, a long process of brainstorming sessions, quantitative idea production, idea selection, market research, etc. has led to that innovation. Normally, these processes are based on the assumption that radical innovation is based on “far out”, “creative”, and completely orthogonal ideas (grafted onto the business from the outside), on a high quantity of — in most cases low quality — ideas going through a rigorous selection/evaluation process, etc.

The concept of emergent innovation follows a radically different approach: it is a socio-epistemological technology focusing on the cognitive processes leading to a new type of innovation (process). The core idea is that this kind of innovation emerges out of a process of both profound understanding of the innovation-object and reflecting and letting-go of predefined patterns of perception and thinking (compare also U-Theory). This leads to radical, yet “organic innovation” in the sense of both respecting and developing the core/essence of the innovation-object (be it a business, service, product, idea, etc.). This socio-epistemological technology of emergent innovation is a highly fragile and intellectually challenging process which has to be held in a container which we are referring to as enabling space; it is a multi-dimensional space enabling and facilitating these processes of knowledge creation. This enabling space comprises of a physical, social (trust, etc.), mental/cognitive, epistemological, as well as technological dimension.

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