Depending on ones role in the innovation process innovations will arrive in different ways, and the way these innovations land on each role players desk will directly affect how they are appreciated. Robert Carlisle wrote somewhat on the subject of a ‘pragmatic boundary’ between role players. He tried to highlight the notion that when successive roles are dependent on each other, that sometimes the traditional syntactic or semantic approaches are not sufficient. Sometimes, in the presence of innovation, more and better communication will not allow for efficient knowledge transfer, and so the innovation is not received in the same way by each successive role player that is dependent on the previous role players to transfer the knowledge of the innovation to them.
Innovation analysis is a strange mix of rhetoric and logic to try and describe through an analogous way, what the merits or demerits, of a particualar innovation may be. Using deductive logic one would try something along the lines of ‘social media platforms are valuable, innovation x is a social media platform, therefore innovation x is valuable.’ A rhetorical approach may be something along the lines of ‘The world is poor and badly connected, and it is morally imperative that we make innovation x available irrespective of its commercial merits.’ Different analysts will probably rely on differing degrees of each arguments contribution depending on where they find themselves in the process. Intuitively one would imagine that rhetoric is most useful at the early stages, when the innovator has little by way of hard facts to justify investment, and again at the end of an investment phase where the innovators are trying hard to demonstrate that failure is not to be measured by the facts, or their logical conclusions. However, rhetoric does not only appear in the innovation process at these points, but too frequently all through the innovation process.
Between birth and failure is the most logical period of innovation analysis. The phases where professionals, who have very little emotional attachment to the innovation, or its success or failure, attempt to apply a rigourous standard of rational application to the matter. However, through the innovation process, there usually exists some board or committee, whose role is to perform oversight on the work of these professionals and to make capital apportionment decisions. Moving the knowledge of the innovation from the professionals to these committee members requires that the knowledge traverse a boundary, and as Carlisle says ‘this creates consequences!‘
Innovations create novel circumstances, and under these circumstances, semantics and syntax fail, and consequentially logic fails. Key to any logical process is the definitions used when stating the premises. The failure of logic here has the consequence that rhetoric must now be used to understand the innovation, and logical fallacies can be created to justify the investment decision. This obviously opens the door to politics – or Carlisle’s ‘Pragmatism.’
Now the problem with politics is that the powerful win. An investment decision by a committee is therefore not a rationally justifiable one, but rather a reflection of the prevailing political positions of the day. Unfortunately, this has lead to a deterioration in the qualities of the professionals that are supposed to analyse innovations, and whose analysis is supposed to assist society to direct its scarce resources appropriately. Its lamentable when a supposedly professional analyst foregoes a break-even analysis because the innovation is meant for the ‘community’. What about shunning attempts at objective valuation?
I enjoyed a recent review article by Patrick Terroir in the publication Les Nouvelles. He says that ‘These limited financial results have driven to significant change in perspective of the TKO/TTO…There is nothing in economic theory to suggest that TTO’s should maximize licence revenue.’ Although there were many such morsels in the article, this one perfectly captures the results of a system where rhetoric prevails over logic. Financial results were the very reason for creating these offices to begin with, and it is a classic example of the fallacious logic that pervades the system.
The limited financial results are due to the fact that crappy innovations get funded in the first place. They get funded for political reasons. Bigotry drives the selection and investment process. Not rational thought in contemplation of sound logical arguments. Private sector and government alike. I cannot think of a definition of economic activity that does not involve the decision to maximize income and minimize losses. This is the very justification for the involvement of professional analysts into the system to begin with. However their logical approach deals with innovation as a means to achieve an economic end. The rhetoric places innovation at the end of the process and sees an economy merely as a means of enabling it.
“But Fred,” I hear you say, “what is your point? I have been pretending to work at my desk while I read this because I thought you might have something profound to say?”
My point is this, dear reader, that the logic and rhetoric of innovation are at odds with each other. That the professionals cannot do any productive work in such a system. That maybe investment committees and boards should be done away with. That the boundary that exists between these two are not transformable because of the power disparity that exists between professionals and members. I guess I am trying to say that 99% of innovations are shit. Logic says flush them, but rhetoric says that the intimately borne, delivered through great struggle and hardship, products of the human existence, should be cherished and nurtured, for fear that some opportunity may be missed, and that it is impossible to be an effective janitor in such ablutions.
Backseat Creator 