Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Pro-innovation Bias?
...
" Innovation research seems to be built on a fundamental assumption that 'innovation is good', which limits the ability of decision makers and change agents to anticipate unintended and undesirable consequences. Hence, a central theme is to develop an understanding of how this bias is constructed in order to explore how it could be deconstructed.
Another central theme of the project is the separation of discourses on desirable and undesirable consequences. More specifically, undesirable consequences of innovation can potentially follow from all types of innovation. These consequences are to some (unknown) degree studied in disciplines such as biology, medicine, environmental studies and sustainable development, and theories are constructed within perspectives drawing on sociology, CMS, STS, etc. Innovation research, however, seems to have implicitly isolated itself from considering them. The separation of discourses in this manner can have dangerous implications. One is that innovation studies have become "routinized". Another is a case of self-defeating purpose; as change agents receive little practical guidance from innovation researchers on how to consider undesirable consequences, they may cause unnecessary suffering among stakeholders, thereby reducing the net value of an innovation. Yet another is a self-feeding vicious circle; unless undesirable consequences are highlighted by innovation researchers, funding bodies see little point in funding such studies, thereby further reducing research.
Project information
Site of research
Hanken School of Economics/Department of Management and Organisation
Period
December 2008-
Research Team
Professor Karl-Erik Sveiby (karl-erik.sveiby (at) hanken.fi, +358 (0)50 4320 160)
Ph.D. Pernilla Gripenberg (pernilla.gripenberg (at) hanken.fi , +358 (0)40 3521 338)
M.Soc. Sc. (Social Psychology), Doctoral candidate Beata Segercrantz (beata.segercrantz (at) hanken.fi, +358 (0)40 3521 500)
Events
Workshop May 5-7, 2010
The aim of this workshop is to encourage researchers to undertake research on consequences of innovation. In this field of research both theoretical and methodological development are needed due to the in-built pro-innovation bias in innovation theory. Undesirable consequences of innovation are notoriously complex, multi-faceted and multilevel and they transcend artificially created scientific boundaries. They require multi-disciplinary research and cross-boundary dialogue. They are difficult, but not impossible to study.
The objective of the workshop is to bring together a group of 15-30 innovation researchers to explore alternatives to mainstream innovation research by addressing how unintended and undesirable consequences of innovation could be brought into the research agenda of the innovation research field. We want to go beyond the 'pro-innovation bias'. To do so another important aim of the workshop is to produce a publication. Inspired by two keynote speakers, Professor Nancy Harding and Professor Jan Fagerberg, the participant will work in small groups throughout the workshop brainstorming, planning and partly writing the future publications. The approach will be critical but the contributions can draw upon a variety of perspectives ranging from mainstream approaches to critical realist and postmodern thought. Topics include contributions on, for example:
• dominant discourse of innovation research that marginalize discourses of unintended and undesirable consequences
• policy
• corporate social responsibility
• any other relevant topic brought forth by participants
Location: Hanken School of Economics, Department of Management and Organization,
P.O. Box 471, 00101 Helsinki, Finland
Inquires: Please contact beata.segercrantz (at) hanken.fi
The researchers' papers and bios can be downloaded.
Selected Publications
Sveiby, K.-E., Gripenberg, P., Segercrantz, B., Eriksson, A. & Aminoff, A. (2009). Unintended and Undesirable Consequences of Innovation. ISPIM Conference The Future of Innovation. Vienna, June 21-24, 2009. (Available on http://www.sveiby.com/articles/UnintendedconsequencesISPIMfinal.pdf)
Sveiby, K.-E. (2009). Aboriginal Principles for Sustainable Development as Told in Traditional Stories, Sustainable Development 17 (6): 341-356. (Available on http://www.sveiby.com/articles/AborigPrincipSustainability.pdf)
Segercrantz, B. (2009). Towards a (more) critical and social constructionist approach to New Product Development projects. Ephemera 9 (2): 182-194. (Available on http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/9-2/9-2segercrantz.pdf)
Gripenberg, P. (2005). ICT and the shaping of society: Exploring human-ICT relationships in everyday life. Ph.D. thesis, Hanken School of Economics. Helsinki: Edita Prima Ltd. (Available on http://dhanken.shh.fi/dspace/bitstream/10227/115/2/143-951-555-874-3.pdf)..."
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Some good reports here
Friday, September 17, 2010
Daily Free Software!
Today: Aiseesoft Streaming Video Recorder - Aiseesoft Streaming Video Recorder enables you to download videos from YouTube, Google video, Yahoo video, PBS, ESPN, blogtv, Adobe TV, ...
I downloaded an excellent screen captuyre facility from this site a week ago
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Open Source Graph or Network Visualization
the web author writes: "Open Source Graph or Network Visualization - Just as I did the last list "Open
Source Structured Graphics Libraries Written in Java" I realized
that I needed an entirely new category. Well here's that category,
network or graph visualization written in open source Java. It's got
some pretty stunning visuals so I recommend that everyone eyeball them."
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
"British universities face a crisis of the mind and spirit. For thirty years, Tory and Labour politicians, bureaucrats, and “managers” have hacked at the traditional foundations of academic life. Unless policies and practices change soon, the damage will be impossible to remedy...
"...
From the accession of Margaret Thatcher onward, the pressure has risen. Universities have had to prove that they matter. Administrators and chairs have pushed faculty to win grants and publish and rewarded those who do so most successfully with periods of leave and other privileges that American professors can only dream of. The pace of production is high, but the social compact among teachers is frayed. In the last couple of years, the squeeze has become tighter than ever. Budgets have shrunk, and universities have tightened their belts to fit. Now they are facing huge further cuts for three years to come—unless, as is likely, the Conservatives take over the government, in which case the knife may go even deeper.
Administrators have responded not by resisting, for the most part, but by trying to show that they can “do more with less.” To explain how they can square this circle, they issue statements in the Orwellian language of “strategic planning.” A typical planning document, from King’s College London, explains that the institution must “create financially viable academic activity by disinvesting from areas that are at sub-critical level with no realistic prospect of extra investment.”
The realities that this cloud of ink imperfectly conceal are every bit as ugly as you would expect. Humanists who work on ancient manuscripts and languages or write about premodern history or struggle with hard issues in semantics don’t always make an immediate impact or bring in large amounts of grant money—even when other scholars around the world depend on their studies. If you don’t see the point of their work, why not eliminate them? Then you have room for things that pay off immediately.....
"...
Are academic salaries really the main source of the pressure on the principal? Vague official documents couched in management jargon are hard to decode. The novelist and art historian Iain Pears notes that King’s has assembled in recent years an “executive team with all the managerial bling of a fully-fledged multi-national, complete with two executive officers and a Chief information officer.” The college spent £33.5 million on administrative costs in 2009, and is actively recruiting more senior managers now. These figures do not evince a passion for thrift. Moreover, the head of arts and humanities proposes to appoint several new members of staff even as others are dismissed. Management probably does want to save money—but it definitely wants to install its own priorities and its own people, regardless of the human and intellectual cost.
Universities become great by investing for the long term. You choose the best scholars and teachers you can and give them the resources and the time to think problems through. Sometimes a lecturer turns out to be Malcolm Bradbury’s fluent, shallow, vicious History Man; sometimes he or she turns out to be Michael Baxandall. No one knows quite why this happens. We do know, though, that turning the university into The Office will produce a lot more History Men than scholars such as Baxandall.
Accept the short term as your standard—support only what students want to study right now and outside agencies want to fund right now—and you lose the future. The subjects and methods that will matter most in twenty years are often the ones that nobody values very much right now. Slow scholarship—like Slow Food—is deeper and richer and more nourishing than the fast stuff. But it takes longer to make, and to do it properly, you have to employ eccentric people who insist on doing things their way. The British used to know that, but now they’ve streaked by us on the way to the other extreme.
At this point, American universities are more invested than British in the old ways. Few of us any longer envy our British colleagues. But straws show how the wind blows. The language of “impact” and “investment” is heard in the land. In Iowa, in Nevada, and in other places there’s talk of closing humanities departments. If you start hearing newspeak about “sustainable excellence clusters,” watch out. We’ll be following the British down the short road to McDonald’s."
