a social innovation system approach to wisdom society: preliminary theses bonn juego phd student...

A Social Innovation System Approach to Wisdom

Society:Preliminary Theses

Bonn JuegoPhD Student

Technology Governance and Political-Economic Development

Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia

Concepts and Tools fromCPE and EDE

• (a) Critical Political Economy

- social relations: ‘the political’, ‘the economic’, ‘the cultural’, ‘the ecological’, ‘the gender’, and all the other spheres of the society are organically connected

• (b) Evolutionary Development Economics

‘Other Canon’ economics: reality economics; knowledge- and production-based

Keynes, Marx, Schumpeter, German Historical School, pre-Smith

Tallinn School: Technology Governance (public and private approach to knowledge-base, competitiveness, and social cohesion)

- Erik Reinert: real economy- Jan Kregel: finance- Carlota Perez: technology and socio-economic

development- Wolfgang Drechsler: Staatwissenschaften (state

science)

Standard Textbook Economicsvs

‘The Other Canon’ of Economics(Selected Starting Points)

• STE vs Other CanonEquilibrium under perfect information and perfect foresight

Learning and decision-making under uncertainty (Schumpeter, Keynes, Shackle)

Moving force: ‘capital per se propels the capitalist engine’

Moving force: new knowledge which creates a demand for capital to be provided from the financial sector

Focused on Man the Consumer. A. Smith: ‘Men are animals which have learned to barter’.

Focused on Man the Innovator and Producer. A. Lincoln: ‘Men are animals which not only work, but innovate’.

Focused on static/comparative static Focused on change

Equality assumption I: no diversity Diversity as a key factor (Schumpeter, Shackle)

Equality assumption II: all economic activities are alike and of equal quality as carriers of economic growth and welfare

Growth and welfare are activity-specific – different economic activities present widely different potentials for absorbing new knowledge

Both theory and policy recommendations tend to be independent of context (‘one medicine cures all’)

Both theory and policy recommendations highly context dependent

The economy largely independent from society

The economy as firmly embedded in society

Technology as a free good, as ‘manna from heaven’

Knowledge and technology are produced, have cost and are protected. This production is based on incentives of the system, including law, institutions and policies.

Economics as Harmonielehre: the economy as a self-regulating system seeking equlibrium and harmony

Economics as an inherently unstable and conflict-rich discipline. Achieving stability is based on Man’s policy measures (Carey, Polanyi, Weber, Keynes)

Postulates the representative firm No ‘representative firm’. All firms are unique (Penrose)

SOCIAL INNOVATION SYSTEM APPROACH TO ‘WISDOM SOCIETY’:

PRELIMARY THESES

• An approach is always for some purpose.

• [a] analytical tool/intellectual filter for understanding innovation system and development

• [b] transformative framework for a ‘wisdom society’ (i.e., a knowledge society with ethical, social, and humane considerations)

SIS as an analytical tool:

(1) Social innovation system refers to the existence of institutional synergies necessary for a socially embedded innovative activities and political-economic development.

Problem: disembedding of the market from the society

Task: re-embedding the market to the society

SIS as an analytical tool...

(2) SIS improvises from the Freeman-Lundvall-Nelson NIS approaches.

‘the social’ in innovation systems

i.e., innovation as a social endeavour that implicates the rest of the society


(3) SIS incorporates all actors in the society – the state/government, firms, supporting institutions both domestic and abroad, and the people themselves – in the process of innovation.

extension of the triple helix states-firms-universities model in understanding the dynamics of innovation to introduce an indispensable set of actors: workers.

Marx: ‘Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified.’


(4) Development, which is constitutive of innovation, is a social relation.

Organic relationship and interaction between the spheres of social life – ‘the political’, ‘the economic’, ‘the cultural’, ‘the ecological’, ‘the gender dimension’

e.g., NIS in varying political-economic context

Scandinavia: (social) democracy

Asian NICs and Catching-up countries: authoritarian political regime (Singapore, China, Vietnam, Malaysia)


(5) SIS recognises differences in national situations (the social specificities). The combined and uneven character of development suggests that societies develop at an uneven pace, requiring different innovation and development strategies from society to society.

e.g. IS within specific social structure

[a] state form: government structures and systems (the political);

[b] economic policies: relationship among economic activities and economic sectors; the relationship between financial capital and production capital, and the relationship among the factors of production such as capital, labour, land, and technology (the economic);

[c] system of ideas and values: (cultural diversity)

General Characteristicsof Social Relations in

Globalising Southeast Asia

Society ‘The Political’ (State Form)

‘The Economic’ (Economic Policies)

‘The Cultural’ (Cultural Diversity)

Philippines Neo-liberal Market-led, service-oriented, and partially agricultural

Homogenous (with peoples acknowledging one Filipino race); cultural diversity based largely on linguistic locales and religion)

Malaysia Neo-statist Focus on manufacturing and services

Heterogeneous; internal diversity with three major races: Malay, Chinese, and Indian

Singapore Neo-corporatist Strong manufacturing sector and knowledge-intensive services

Largely homogenous, yet increasingly becoming heterogeneous with the incorporation of foreign workers

SIS as a transformative framework:

• SIS as an transformative framework:

for policy or advocacy

‘Wisdom Society’: knowledge society with ethical, social, humane considerations

SIS as a transformative framework...

(1) Innovation is not an end in itself, but a means towards a telos.

development: qualitative improvement to the lives of all

political development: democracy

economic development: raising standard of living for the workers; getting tax for the government; and high earnings for firms

telos: the good life

‘The good is the most accurate measure of all things.’ (Aristotle, Politikos)


(2) Compassion of critical political economy for humanity + insight of evolutionary development economics = formulation of a coherent institutional fit and synergy for development among three organically connected spheres in the society

[a] state form: government structures and systems (the political);

[b] economic policies: relationship among economic activities and economic sectors; the relationship between financial capital and production capital, and the relationship among the factors of production such as capital, labour, land, and technology (the economic);

[c] system of ideas and values: (way of thinking and lifeworld)


(3) Wisdom is the antidote to the commodification of knowledge.

know for whom

‘technology for whom?’, ‘knowledge for whom?’, ‘innovation for whom?’; ‘development for whom?’

‘Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.’ - Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason


• ‘It is no longer enough to be smart — all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.’

- Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence


(4) Non-market actors are, and can be, forces of wisdom. As such, innovation is not to be exclusively associated with the market or commercialisation.

e.g., Linux, Open Source Movements, various NGOs


(5) The academic disciplines of the social sciences, philosophy, arts, and humanities – which are marginalized in IS discourses – play important roles for the realization of a wisdom society.

a social innovation system approach to wisdom society: preliminary theses bonn juego phd student...

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