Innovation as New and Novel
Change emerged as a major theme in the definitions of innovation that we encountered. In their statements, our interview participants repeatedly connected innovation with newness or novelty. However, many different facets of change were represented. From radical to incremental, technological to personal, progressive to inevitable, the excerpts below show some of the many viewpoints found in our data on innovation as representing newness and change.
"Radical"
Dominant Lens"I don't know why they would be considered innovative except that they're new, different, and sometimes life-changing."
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Challenging Lens“Well, its been done before - just not to this scale, I guess.”
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“Not built on a previously, existing framework. That’s gotta be innovative. Yeah.”
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“It's not a new idea but I think its rapidity with which it's taken up into society .”
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“...all software patents that I have ever seen, have been built on the shoulders of those who have come before them, if not built on their toes. Ah, most of the software patents are incremental, they bring very little to the part that wasn’t already known.”
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To me it's innovative because it's a brand new thing. It's taking technologies that have existed in the past and it's pushing them farther, kind of closer to their limits of what's possible."
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The dominant lens of innovation involves an overly-simplified notion of newness that rejects any notion of imitation, adaptation, or other gradual or incremental change. This can be seen in the data by people explicitly saying that radical innovation is the only innovation, or by people citing examples of innovation that are radical.
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The challenging lens of innovation accepts imitation, adaptation, or other gradual or incremental change. This can be seen in the data by people saying this explicitly, or by citing examples of innovation that are incremental or gradual.
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"High Tech"
Dominant Lens"I think it’s innovative from the stand point of that they’ve never been able to do it before. I think it’s always been this elusive Star Trek dream."
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Challenging Lens“It doesn't have to be something concrete or something physical, a building or a program. I think it's more about the way our minds change and expand. Anything that creates that within us, I guess is innovation.”
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"The additive manufacturing, so the 3D printing"
"DNA fabrication" "Humanoid like Robot, called an avatar" "Manufacturing scale-up for current technologies at Virginia Tech, Nano-fibers" "This new weapons system uses electromagnetism" |
This dominant lens of innovation as high tech says that innovation is associated only with technical artifacts or systems. This appeared in our data mostly through people citing high-tech things as examples of innovation: iPads, 3D printers, robotics, etc.
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The challenging lens of innovation doesn't accept the “high-tech” or artifact assumption. Interviewees who viewed innovation through this lens talked about about ideas, concepts, or even change itself as innovative. They did not cite specific material things, let alone ones that were high-tech.
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"Progressive"
Dominant Lens"Obviously the point is to make progress. You don’t want to stay stagnant. So you always want to improve.There are always things, areas, to improve."
"It’s just allowing for more creation and more creative changes to occur." |
Challenging Lens“I think sometimes it does like if we're in a situation of sadness or restraint, then obviously there's the element of human nature that it's like do or die kind of thing. And I guess that would be what propels us toward something different.”
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The dominant lens of innovation paints innovation as always a good thing. This can be seen in the data by people speaking positively about innovation as a process or about specific innovations.
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The challenging lens of innovation accepts some of the negative aspects of innovation and argues that it isn't always positive, or isn't itself associated with specific values.
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The Computational Picture
Created to provide a visual and statistical complement to our qualitative analysis, the word clouds below were constructed based on the frequency with which words were used in a given sample of microinterviews. The larger a word appears in the image, the more often it was found in the sample. The first image was created using only those microinterviews which were classified as "non-dominant" through our qualitative discourse analysis. The views expressed in these microinterviews are similar to the "challenging lenses" above. The second image took all microinterview data - both dominant and non-dominant - as its sample.
Word cloud showing the relative frequency of all keywords appearing in non-dominant microinterviews
The image above shows a word cloud of all of the relevant keywords appearing in all of the microinterviews that were classified as "non-dominant." This shows some of the non-dominant ways of thinking about innovation, typically associated with politics, leadership, and the concept of "change" more broadly. Interestingly, aspects of the dominant way of talking about innovation appear here, too, such as "technological" and "profit."
The image above shows a word cloud of all of the relevant keywords appearing in all of the microinterviews that were classified as "non-dominant." This shows some of the non-dominant ways of thinking about innovation, typically associated with politics, leadership, and the concept of "change" more broadly. Interestingly, aspects of the dominant way of talking about innovation appear here, too, such as "technological" and "profit."
Wordcloud showing the relative frequency of all keywords over all microinterviews
This image, based on all microinterview data, shows that a lot of the words that are associated with the dominant way of speaking (such as "technology" and "new") appear frequently, but so do words associated with the non-dominant way of speaking (such as "political" and "community"). It further indicates that robots are innovative.
This image, based on all microinterview data, shows that a lot of the words that are associated with the dominant way of speaking (such as "technology" and "new") appear frequently, but so do words associated with the non-dominant way of speaking (such as "political" and "community"). It further indicates that robots are innovative.