Sharing and Nurturing Ideas through Liquid Networks - Essay Example

12 April Sharing and Nurturing Ideas through Liquid Networks What are the environments and practices that lead to extraordinarily high levels of innovation? Walker, Avellaneda, and Berry define innovation as “a process through which new ideas, objects and practices are created, developed or reinvented, and which are new for the unit of adoption” (96). In “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Johnson argues that “liquid networks” promote innovation. These networks produce “conjugal beds” of creativity, because people from different backgrounds and with different interests and ideas come together and their ideas collide and take novel forms. Blakley agrees with Johnson in her talk, “Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture.” She says that the fashion industry promotes creativity, because it legalizes copying from one another. In “Exploring the Diffusion of Innovation among High and Low Innovative Localities,” Walker, Avellaneda, and Berry explore the diffusion of innovation among high and low innovative localities. They learn that competition and learning are some of the factors that can promote and reinforce innovation processes. King and Anderson review several cases and studies in their book, Managing Innovation and Change: A Critical Guide for Organizations, and they discover that many innovation processes do not follow a linear nature of ideation. This essay examines how innovative ideas are formed. It is an important topic because with numerous social, economic, and political issues and problems plaguing communities and societies, innovation is a critical component in resolving them. Innovation can help provide different options, and even, radical new ways of analyzing and resolving social problems and concerns. This essay reviews literature from Johnson, Blakley, King and Anderson, and Walker et al. These authors, Johnson, Blakley, King and Anderson, and Walker et al., agree that innovation takes time and teamwork. It can even thrive on conflict, or come from diversity at the workplace, according to King and Anderson. This essay proposes that innovation is essentially a shared activity. It depends on people and organizations or spaces that support this sharing process. It supports Johnson’s and Blakley’s idea, where organizations that promote producing, nurturing, and sharing of ideas through liquid networks are the “hotbeds” of innovation. Spaces and organizations that promote the production of different ideas instigate innovation through promoting the free flow and exchange of ideas. Johnson observes that the sources of innovations are places that generate “liquid networks.” Johnson defines “liquid networks” as spaces, where people from numerous backgrounds and who have different values, practices, values, and interests, collaborate and share their ideas. He notes that it is a liquid network, because of the easy flow of ideas and it is a network, because people come together to share these ideas. He stresses that these liquid networks are places where ideas intersect, mix with each other, or help people generate something new from parts of the old. Johnson states that one classic example of liquid networks are coffeehouses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the Enlightenment, Johnson narrates that instead of coffee, alcohol was served in these coffeehouses. He notes that these people drank alcohol from morning until evening, by sipping beer or wine every now and then, since water was not very safe to drink then. With these stimulants, he notes that “better ideas” are formed. In addition, Johnson stresses that the “architecture of coffeehouses” made it easy for ideas to “have sex.” In these coffeehouses, people from different fields had their ideas openly shared, made, altered, and combined with other ideas. These are places where innovation thrived, because of the setting that allowed the free sharing of ideas possible. If Johnson is looking for a liquid network culture, he can also find it in the fashion industry. Blakley stresses: “Because there's no copyright protection in this industry, there's a very open and creative ecology of creativity.” She is saying that when an industry or society condones the free copying and sharing of ideas, creativity levels will significantly rise. The fashion industry is not about copying designs without any specific role in creativity. Blakley clarifies that because copying is so pervasive; designers ensure that their designs are very difficult to copy. In essence, she says that they innovate, because they know that their ideas will soon lose their novelty and appeal due to “innovation diffusion,” or the process of innovation that spreads or diffuses across the industry. In addition, innovation is also promoted through the free exchange of ideas. Johnson notes that fashion designers see or learn something new from other designers and they change it to make it their own. She underscores that copying inspires people to think of ways of recreating trends. This is one of the reasons why fashion trends recur. Johnson shows that recurring fashion is sustained by the need to recreate from old trends; it is sustained by and for innovation. King and Anderson stress from their study that creative organizations adopt different innovation models or practices. Nevertheless, many organizations do not follow a linear approach to innovation, although King and Anderson cite the importance of Van de Ven et al.’s 1999 study, which proposed three stages of innovation, which are the initiation period, development period, and implementation/termination period (158). King and Anderson provide evidence too that innovation comes from places that promote sharing of ideas. In these spaces, ideas emerge and are synthesized to create new ideas. These spaces truly allow the breeding of ideas, which results to opportunities for developing high levels of creativity. Diffusion of innovation comes from different sources and even competition. “Innovation diffusion” is important to local agencies too, according to Walker, Avellaneda, and Berry. They studied the causes of total innovation for English public agencies that are characterized with high or low innovation. Walker et al. provide findings indicate that in the higher innovators, “public pressure (responsiveness to user demands), learning (professional associations), competition (service provider competition) and mandate (vertical influence from national government policies)” are critical drivers of innovation (113). They add that the innovation levels of the relatively lower innovative authorities are statistically correlated with three driving devices: “provider competition; external pressure; and responsiveness to user demands” (113). In other words, Walker et al. assert that unlike high innovative authorities, professional associations and vertical influence have no constructive effect on low innovative authorities, whereas outside pressures and competition did (113). Hence, they conclude that high innovative local authorities react to diffusion pressures in a different way from low innovative ones (113). Blakley already supports innovation diffusion in non-copyright structures of the fashion industry. She makes a compelling point that without copyrights on designs in the fashion industry, ideas diffuse easily and innovation is intensely pursued to avoid being copied too easily. One of the sources of innovations is to add more ideas to the table. In the article “The Genius of the Tinkerer,” Johnson concludes his article with the film that narrates the near-disastrous Apollo 13 mission. The mission control engineers realized they must create an improvised carbon dioxide filter, or the astronauts will “poison” the air of their lunar vehicle with their own breath, before they go back to Earth. Johnson narrates that astronauts have abundance of carbon "scrubbers" aboard, but these filters were made for the original, broken spacecraft and did not fit the airing system of the lunar module they are using. He states that mission control rapidly amasses a "tiger team" of engineers to solve the problem. In the film, Johnson says that Deke Slayton, head of flight crew operations, throws a messy pile of gear on a conference table: “hoses, canisters, stowage bags, duct tape and other assorted gadgets.” Johnson illustrates that Deke shows the crew the carbon scrubbers and says: “We gotta find a way to make this fit into a hole for this,” then he points at the pile on the table “using nothing but that.” This is a good illustration of innovation that comes from what people have. Johnson cleverly puts it: “The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.” When Walker et al. studied high and low innovative localities, high innovative organizations distinguish themselves from lower innovative localities by learning good practices from professional associations and networks (113). This can be related to Johnson’s idea of liquid networks, where these networks include other professional institutions, as well as the notion of putting more ideas on the table to generate innovation. The flow of ideas from one industry to another can support innovation in public organizations too. Walker et al. stress that sharing information between governmental jurisdictions has been noted as a crucial strategy in English local government and produces rewards for all involved stakeholders (113). They explain that an essential component of the strategy of gathering information from the external environment has been “to benchmark” with other public agencies, and for organizations to compete for the awards from the Beacon Council scheme (113). Walker et al. add that local organizations look out to other agencies and not local ones too for competition, because competing directly with similar local agencies tend to be harmful to their innovation processes (113). King and Anderson agree that innovation should be a positive social force. For them, conflict is essential, but one that is manageable enough to avoid generating detrimental stress to other stakeholders. They emphasize the role of cooperation and collaboration in exchanging information and ideas, such as those that can be found in open source networks. Places that allow ideas to develop, or to be nurtured, promote innovation. Johnson also notes that ideas take time to properly shape up. He says that Charles Darwin, for instance, based on his notebooks, has been muddling over his theory of evolution for months, before coming up with the right theory for natural selection. Ideas do not produce overnight; they are also based on available skills and resources. In a news article “The Genius of the Tinkerer,” Johnson narrates the tale of MIT fellow, Timothy Prestero. After the 2004 tsunami, international relief organizations donated eight neonatal incubators to the Indonesian city of Meulaboh. Several years later, Prestero visited the local hospital and discovered that all eight were unusable, due to power surges and tropical humidity, as well as the hospital staff's struggle in reading the English repair manual. Mr. Prestero and the organization he co-founded, Design That Matters, had been working for a number of years on a more dependable, and less expensive, incubator for the developing world. In 2008, they produced a prototype called the NeoNurture. It appeared as a “streamlined modern incubator, but its guts were automotive.” Johnson notes the years needed to build up the right incubator that used local resources and very easy to fix using local skills and materials. He says: “We like to think of our ideas as a $40,000 incubator, shipped direct from the factory, but in reality they've been cobbled together with spare parts that happened to be sitting in the garage.” Walker et al. also note from their study that agencies do not pursue innovation without planning and careful analysis. Even with intense competition, these organizations take time in refining innovative ideas before implementing them. Johnson and Blakley confirm that innovation takes time and teamwork. Organizations that encourage producing, nurturing, and sharing of ideas through liquid networks are the hotbeds of innovation. Innovation is a social process that liquid networks can particular promote. King and Anderson maintain that innovation can even thrive on conflict, since it also dwells on rich workplace diversity. Liquid networks provide different spaces where people can freely exchange their ideas and test them. They are not afraid to take risks and make mistakes. Innovation, after all, has a way of rising from its own ashes, as long as more ideas are put into the table of liquid networks. Works Cited Blakley, Johanna. “Johanna Blakley: Lessons from Fashion's Free Culture.” TED, May 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. < http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/ johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html>. Johnson, Steven. “The Genius of the Tinkerer.” The Wall Street Journal, 25 Sept. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. < http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB10001424052748703989304575503730101860838.html?mod =WSJ_Books_LS_Books>. ---. “Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From.” TED, Sept. 2010. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. . King, Nigel and Neil Anderson. Managing Innovation and Change: A Critical Guide for Organizations. London: Thomson, 2002. Print. Walker, Richard M., Avellaneda, Claudia N., and Frances S. Berry. “Exploring the Diffusion of Innovation among High and Low Innovative Localities.” Public Management Review 13.1 (2011): 95-125. Print. Read More