Role of innovativeness and critical thinking in Individual and organizational Context

PAPER presented in Delhi Univ. Academic congress 6^th & 7^th aug 2012

I

nnovation is about weaving diverse knowledge sets to a successful configuration and turning resources to reduce the uncertainty.

            In our initiative to do better we may adopt incremental innovation or radical innovation. In order to maximize the benefit of innovation we must try to understand the architecture of innovation which is learning and configuring new knowledge system and unlearning an old and established one. Innovation is a core process concerned with renewing what the organization offers and the ways in which it generates and delivers these.

            At the basic level to the organization has to manage certain phases making up the innovation process.

They have to;  Search their environments (internal and external), need analysis at its stake – holders. Opportunities are arising and process signals about potential innovation strategically selecting from set of potential triggers a few things that organization is best resourced at doing. Implementing the innovation growing from a need and research analysis.

            Reflect upon the previous phases and review experience of success and failure. No organization is an island – the challenge of networking.

            Innovation involves trying to deal with an extended and rapidly advancing scientific frontier, political uncertainties, and regulatory instabilities and a set of competitors who are increasingly coming from unexpected directions.

            Roy Rothwell’s vision of “fifth generation” innovation is essentially the one on which we need to operate – with rich and diverse network linkages accelerated and enable by n intensive set of information and communication technologies.

            Innovation does not necessarily imply the commercialization of only a major advance in the technological state of the art but it includes also the utilization of even small – scale changes in technological knowhow – Roy Rothwell and Paul Gardiner (1985) ‘Invention, innovation, re – innovation and the role of user, Technovation, 3, 168.

            Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as on opportunity for a service. It is capable of being presented as disciplines, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced’ Peter Drucker (1985) Innovation on and entrepreneurship Harper & Row, New York.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have its not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you are led, and how much you get it (Steve Job, Interview with Forbe’s Magazine 1998).

            Innovation is increasingly about building teamwork and creative combination of different disciplines and perspectives.

            Organizations which manage to challenge the accepted rules of the game by creating and maintaining an innovation organizational context that enables innovation to flourish.

            Interesting misconceptions associated with innovation must be taken into account. Vacuous expression of mission and vision associated with top – management commitment is associated with successful innovation whereas real challenge of implementation and commitment by its stake – holders is not ascribed due importance. Innovation is inherently uncertain and inevitably involves failures as well as successes. As Robert cooper 2003 suggests, the inherent uncertainty in innovation should be reduced where possible through the use of information collection and research.

            We should not confuse leadership and commitment with always being the active change agent. In many case innovation happens in spite of senior management within an organization, and success emerges as a result of guerilla tactics rather than a frontal assault on the problem.

            Emerging literature on styles of creativity and management suggests that it is useful to keep preference distinct from capacity. Creativity is required in both the situation while doing things differently and doing things better. The traditional nation of leadership highlighting heroic attribute is being questioned nowadays where reciprocity of leader follower characteristics is also assigned due importance. It is not possible to find Gandhi and Vivekananda today but it is equally important to perceive the cardinal shift of traits among the citizen’s at large. Thus an organization in order to be innovative requires a leadership, management and its stake holders. High involvement in innovation and a road map for the Journey (HII):-

            Research on implementing HII suggest different stages of the Journey progressing of the journey progressing from the development of systems and capability to involve people and also progressing in terms of bottom live benefits.

Stages in the evolution of HII capability involves random problem solving to structured problem solving attempts and measurement of HII against strategic goals to proactive HII and sharing the learning as dominant habit pattern of an organization.

CREATIVE CLIMATE

Microsoft’s only factory asset is the human imagination. (Bill Gates)

Louis Pasteur observed “chance favors the prepared mind” and we can usefully deploy our understanding of the creative process to help set up the conditions within which such accidents can take place.

It is important to realize that every one of us possesses creativity but preferred style of expressing it is governed by a set of socio-cultural and organizational practices.

Some people are comfortable with challenging the status quo in which a system works, while others prefer smaller changes at individual level to improve their own working environment.

That is the reason many creative people like artists, painters, scientists have at times difficulty living under the domain of conventional acceptance behavior.

Organizational structures are the visible artifacts’ of what can be termed an innovative culture- one in which innovation can prosper. There is no single definition of culture but it broadly relates to the pattern of shared values, beliefs and agreed norms or in short collective programming of mind of the people in a given context. Changing the culture and reinforcing behavioral norms can’t happen as a result of few initiatives or mass training in a new technique of particular relevance in this area is the design of effective rewards systems. Rewarding text – book behavior or rewarding creative behavior and to encourage its emergence innovation and the idea of extending involvement goes far – beyond the stake – holders and building relationship  with extended cast of characters, including society at large. Post innovation auditing research suggests that learning new tricks is the ability to forget old ones and the difficult to teach is that old patterns are very deeply embedded.

            No longer is it necessary to have all the resources for innovation under one roof provided you know who the expert of a particular field is.

            It is clear not only in India but also in developed counties that scientist, academicians and researchers have become disposed towards the commercialization of research. The badly targeted and poorly monitored financial support provided by research institutions in India are mostly producing ‘entrepreneurial academics’ rather than ‘academic – entrepreneurs – scientists in the Public and Govt. sector who are not really committed to creating start – ups, but rather are seeking alternative support for their own research agendas and widening their own Bio – Data. This has resulted in commercially oriented or industry – funded research activity with little growth prospects, remaining in incubator for many years. This commercial exploitation of industry friendly research poses a real danger of lowering of our. Research standards and instead of pursuing the pursuit of knowledge we move a far from it. In most cases our research findings are defined imprecisely, targeting ambiguous objectives, prove impracticable and prescribe further research in the area.         

There is a need to connect our researches with the developmental problems of our day to day life and societal problems.

A key issue that requires urgent attention in our higher education research is to find connectivity with the real problems and find out mechanisms to solve them objectively and scientifically.  It is good to conduct research activities but finding the link with social economic problems like Naxalism, Casteism, Communalism, Corruption, white collar crime, and so on is equally important.

Lack of strict ethical guidelines has led to high levels of voluminous publications becoming prima-Dona of their respective disciplines and making a complete mess of their research findings.

Context independent innovation ideas and practices have no relevance as all knowledge of the world, according to post – metaphysical thinking is continued communicatively. That means the process of innovation acquisition is itself a communicative process that may develop in course of an exchange of reasons and evidence among speakers of knowledge claims and large social gamut of receivers of such claims. Our tendency to dividing the reality in terms of dependents and independents variable is problematic because it rejects subjectivity, agency and meaningful reflection. The colonization at our minds with power-point presentation finding causes of causes reduce is capability of being creative.

            Vygotsky (1981) and his followers have challenged mechanistic and individualistic concept of human mental life.

Thomas Kuhn (1962) historians of science emphasized the difference what researchers are supposed to do and what they actually do.

In our higher education system too much rigidity on methodology rather than on subject matter has led to an altitude called methodologism. It a methodology can prescribe what a researcher can study,   research is unnecessarily limited. Critical approach does not exclude subjectivity from our research (parker 2003) from post structuralism perspective innovativeness can’t be defined safely by science, but by the layers of history and future creations captured in wider sense of language, thought and experience.

Our innovative desires, acts and thoughts have extra-scientific dimensions.

In post structuralism the objectivity and purity is contrasted with values still at work that we can find innovativeness.

For example the language of science and forms used to justify it are analyzed for false presuppositions with respect to time, space and reality (Deleuze) with respect to narratives of progress (Lyotard) with respect to ethical or epistemological neutrality (Foucalt, Kristeva) or with respect to implied metaphysics (Derrida) Deleuze’s describing the concept of Difference and Repetition calls for going beyond, or transcending the boundaries of given faculties of thought.

            His theory also suggests that thinking must seek out ways to be jogged by radically different experiences.

            In the process of being innovative ours faculties should be resolutely interdisciplinary. We should not separate our theories of disciplines without prior practice. We should encourage experimenting with the new ideas and working in a different way.

            All forms of established common – sense and common - values be allowed to be criticized to given space to creativity.

            In the field of art and literature our thought should be given space to encounter contingent events; space away from accountancy and accountability.

            In the Discourse figure layout does not define the figural in abstraction from works. He described deconstruction power of a Picasso drawing as follows;

            We have illustration of (the transgression of a revealing trace) in this drawing by Picasso (Nude Study 1941) where the object of the deconstructions is the edge, the line that marks a single unifying and reifying point of view. The co – existence of many contours induces simultaneity of many points of view. (DF: 277)

            In his book Libidinal Economy (1974) Lyotard constructs metaphysics of intensities hidden within structures.

            In these changing be understood in Habermasian terms as a global phase of the “Colonization” of the communicatively mediated reproduction of the “Life world” by “Systemic” mechanisms of social co – ordination based on “Steering Media” in particular many and administrative power.

            It is all more necessary to forge a balance with these impersonal systemic forces to gain effectives else danger of losing our self – belief and innovative ability. A fundamental tension pattern is on the ascendant with the requirements of capitalist economy and lesser self – control of individuals in navigating their own and contemporary societies complexes.

            At times it is very difficult to avoid the dominant. The power to determine what is pathological contributes to a disciplinary regime (Foucault, 1980). Definitions of normality and optimal mental health serve as ideas of behavior. These authorized meanings of normal and abnormal constrain everyone being innovative.

Role of Leadership in Innovativeness and Concept of the Servant Leader:-

            We are not accustomed to thinking of leaders as servants. We had to emphasize position rather than responsibility. Socrates had identified the common element of service in all leadership by insisting the core responsibility of leaders is to meet human needs. Jesus clothed much the same message with his religions authority. By so doing, he altered for all time the moral climate of leadership. The deepest flow in leadership is usually arrogance. The root of arrogance is an inflated pride which makes a person in a position of leadership act in an excessively determined, overbearing or domineering way.

            The anidotes to the disease of arrogance in relation to leadership go back as far as Lao Tzu, a Chinese thinker in the fourth century BC and supremely to Jesus. In the concept of leadership advanced by both Lao Tzu and Jesus there is a marked absence of assertiveness, a lack of vanity or presumption and the feeling that a leader should see his or her part as something moderate or small in scale especially in comparison to the contribution of others.

            The Tao principal is what happens to itself. It is this quality of things spontaneously and in an unselfconscious way without regard to their effects upon other people’s perceptions of oneself, the links Lao Tzu with the treading of Jesus. There is a freedom from acting for show or indeed for outward things. This refusal to dominate or to Lord it over others again parallels the teaching of Jesus. Lao envisaged a leader who practices humility, being neither self assertive nor talking. The highest good is like that of water wrote Lao. The goodness of water is that it benefits ten thousand creatures, yet itself with the places that all men disdain on leadership for example, the following words of Lao Tzu have become justly famous:-  A leader is best when people are hardly aware of his existence not so good when people praise his government less good when people stand in fear worst, when people are contemptuous. Fail to honor people, and they will fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who speaks little when his task is accomplished his work done. The people say, we did it ourselves.     

Thus innovativeness implies a rejection of certain or predetermined way of science especially where it becomes either an arbiter of value (for example in terms of morality) or where it claims to be value free (for example interns of being able to give value-neutral determinations of human and animal essence or life).

The real art of innovativeness lies in appreciation of diversity of value.

A scholarly French tradition of academic exercise called “explication de texte” in which focus is on interpretation, situation and illuminating description, rather than on critique, classification or judgment.

The failure of the space of language sharing reduces the emotional bonding in our class-room situations and it leads to a practice of revolving around fixed meanings of the texts. Innovative expression depends on events that trigger the creative process. Innovativeness lies in involvement in wider relations of transformation and overcoming. Sometimes our position, our power identity holds us not being natural and fixes the pattern we can move in. Famous quote of Michel Foucalt’s “Do not ask me to remain the same leave to the bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order (The archaeology of knowledge 1969; 19).

In the landmark essay “what is universal pragmatics” Habermas(1971) distinguishes between language(Sparche) and speech(Rede).Whereas linguistic competence refers to the ability to produce syntactically well-formed sentences, communicative competence refers to our ability to produce context-appropriate utterances.

The role of communication is not merely transmitting information rather it should also involve establishing relationship.

The process of modernization continues in the form of what Ulrich Beck (1992) and others have termed “individualization’’.

The demand for being more innovative has also become important with the expansion of choices of occupation, marriage partners, religion, life styles and so on and contemporary individuals have to be more cautious in making rights decisions. It is becoming increasingly complex to strike a balance between individual developments (“Ontogeny”) and social evolution (“Phylogeny”).

Indian mythological perspective

If we incorporate Indian perspective of Jainism it mentions if we judge things from standpoint we are going to miss plurality of truth. According to Buddhism the world would be better for the triumph of natural law over supernaturalism. It also describes causes and effects are earlier and later stages of a continuous process. According to Bhagvad Gita three methods Karma Marg, Bhakti Margand Jnana Marg is pathways that will lead to same goal for access to the divine.

Even in organizational contexts conditions of co-reflections, polytonality or expanding interpretations opens multiple paths of innovativeness.

Educational organizations should be the fields of conversations among members to co-construct meaning.

Decisions not created by participants remain alien and people support more what they themselves create. Sources of leadership lies not in individuals but in collaborative relations

We should adopt an attitude that encourages curiosity and optimism. We should tend to avoid stereotypes in our thinking and behavior.

According to Gandhi Ji it is possible for a teacher situated miles away to affect the spirit of his pupil by his way of living. A cowardly teacher cannot make his boys valiant.

            The most brilliant surgeon is not the best man to run a hospital nor do the bestselling authors best suited to run a publishing house. Researches in psychology indicate people are more likely to keep promises which they have made voluntarily. No single concept of innovativeness can be tried at different points of time and context. But this curiosity to participate in creative acts can lead to innovativeness. A major shift is required in the paradigm of pedagogy that promotes mediocrity. A leading school master of his time wrote we are they who make or mar all. They that are flowers of our nation, and those who becomes leaders of the rest are committed to our education and instruction. Many of the landmark discoveries and innovations have come from travelers account of their journey to different geographical space interacting the diverse set of people.   persons like Lord Buddha, Jesus Christ, Vivekananda, Columbus, Alexander the Great , Mother Teresa, Gandhiji, Fahiyan, Huentsang and many others traveled extensively in order to come out with their innovative best. Similarly in the recent times Ed-Deiner considered as father of happiness surveyed and travelled more than hundred countries to innovate the concept of Happiness index. To the surprise of many Bhutan is the happiest country in terms of happiness index not a developed country like U.S.A.

This presentation will not achieve its mission of expressing ideas related to innovativeness if it fails to connecect to the local reality happening in Delhi university of India where we are witnessing innovation initiatives like innovation projects, granting of permission to unmukt chand for appearing in examination, Launch of Gyanoday express,,Cluster innovation projetare some of the landmark initiatives. This is just the tip of the iceberg and a more committed effort at individual and collective levels is required to flourish ourselves in a culture of innovativeness and creativity and pave the way for bright future for the present and successive generations.