Taking advantage of emergence for discovery

emergence-and-discoverySo this week my research was moving around issues of complexity within innovation and I came across a great paper, written by Deborah Dougherty “Organizing for innovation in complex innovation systems”

Although she is addressing within this paper the bigger more complex social and economic challenges we are facing in healthcare, alternative energy, water scarcity, climate management, poverty and economic revitalization, she is attempting to reframe these into problem resolutions from breaking down discovery into four distinct channels. I liked this thinking.

The new innovating world we face in the 21st Century

Her opening insight is in the twenty-first century we are all requiring more reliance on social technologies that are designed to allow the different technologies to emerge and be allowed to integrate, due to the diversity and diffusion of knowledge. This is different from past practices found within organizations. Dr Dougherty points out much of what takes place today is still based on nineteenth-century practices where organizations were designed to stabilize, scale up and optimize, mostly internally, the scientific and technological knowledge into large working configurations.

Art and Science Combines for Innovation

Art and Science
Image source: www.business2community.com

So do Art and Science combine for innovation?

First of all, what we do does come from us as humans, in our actions and needs,these are also the starting point for innovation, pushing for something new; it is linked to experiences and questioning, seeking out and wanting to explore “all things possible”.

The powerful combination of designing and providing something that pushes our existing knowledge, our boundaries, understanding or expectations and capturing it in thought, in explanation or detailing out the discovery makes up the art and science of innovation.

We just need to find even-better and consistent ways to combine them continuously.

Science chases progress, Art really does not. Art just looks to make a change, sometimes evolving, sometimes in powerful new ways and it does this from the evolving multiple perspectives and studies of much that is existing, both physical and within the mind to express this to others.

Sometimes, Science is often constrained by a far too linear approach and this needs somehow change where we need to think in less rigid, structured ways today.