Description:
This paper develops an analysis of innovation based on Allen Oakley's (2002) primary themes of ontological priority, agency-structure and critical realism. I develop a history of thought and contemporaneous endogenous view of innovation in an environment of uncertainty, potential novelty and policy priority. Drawing on the literature of Austrian, institutional, Schumpeterian, Penrosean and other schools, I explore a continuum of agency-structure relationships that enhance innovation. These relationships cover environments that are based on agency and contingency, through to those that balance contingency with containment (structure), and situations that are heavily contained. The literature on innovation is investigated vis-à-vis the degree to which different environments encourage creative, original marketable opportunities for the common good. Innovation policy-making is then investigated through the traverse process of irreversibility, and within a retroductionist planning process. Overall, I seek to advance the cause of realism through innovations generated in different environments.
Description:
This paper develops an analysis of innovation based on Allen Oakley's (2002) primary themes of ontological priority, agency-structure and critical realism. I develop a history of thought and contemporaneous endogenous view of innovation in an environment of uncertainty, potential novelty and policy priority. Drawing on the literature of Austrian, institutional, Schumpeterian, Penrosean and other schools, I explore a continuum of agency-structure relationships that enhance innovation. These relationships cover environments that are based on agency and contingency, through to those that balance contingency with containment (structure), and situations that are heavily contained. The literature on innovation is investigated vis-à-vis the degree to which different environments encourage creative, original marketable opportunities for the common good. Innovation policy-making is then investigated through the traverse process of irreversibility, and within a retroductionist planning process. Overall, I seek to advance the cause of realism through innovations generated in different environments.
Description:
There is a lack of ontology in the study and explication of innovation. Does this matter? It matters because ‘innovation’ has become an important word in the 21st Century, reflecting all that is modern, progressive and exciting in a complex world. This is reflected in every phase of daily existence in modern capitalist economies. Firms are urged to be innovative to gain or sustain a ‘competitive edge’, consultants advertise their strategic advice as the essence of innovation, local communities’ survival depend on the capacity building that comes from innovation, schools are exalted to have innovation in their curriculum, universities promote themselves as leaders in innovation. Politicians respond to the need for supporting all the above through policies for enhancing such innovation in the nation.
Description:
There is a lack of ontology in the study and explication of innovation. Does this matter? It matters because ‘innovation’ has become an important word in the 21st Century, reflecting all that is modern, progressive and exciting in a complex world. This is reflected in every phase of daily existence in modern capitalist economies. Firms are urged to be innovative to gain or sustain a ‘competitive edge’, consultants advertise their strategic advice as the essence of innovation, local communities’ survival depend on the capacity building that comes from innovation, schools are exalted to have innovation in their curriculum, universities promote themselves as leaders in innovation. Politicians respond to the need for supporting all the above through policies for enhancing such innovation in the nation.