Over the past 2 years, I’ve devoted myself to understanding innovation and to an extent I think I’m just about getting there with a paper published in Design Issues (one of the top 2 design journals) reviewing the relationship between Innovation and Design, and through my IDEAS collaboration, am working with some of the top academics working in Innovation in the UK, particularly Prof. J Howells,Director Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (Manchester Business School).

The realisation I’ve come to is that fundamentally Innovation is too nebulous and general a thing to really grasp. There are deep-rooted academic traditions and perspectives for example to the OU and the University of Surrey from 60’s and 70’s and subsequent activity that make it difficult to have an impact in the area, but more, that it’s not possible to get grip on it as an entity it’s too polysemic. Building on this realisation the thing I’m most interested in, and I think is most significant to the broader innovation debate, is the process that enable innovation and fundamentally this means some aspect of knowledge exchange.

I’m always drawn to the fundamentals, the core texts, the paradigms that shape understanding and only then drawing these into design practice not just for grounding in the real world, but also to test and prompt new abstract theories understanding and further applications. An example of this approach is an engagement (tussle) with Michel de Certeau and his tactical/strategic differentiation (see The Practice of Everyday Life for more). I reacted against his rather gloomy assertion that engagement in non-hierarchical ways was inherentl limited to the fleeting tactical engagement with little prospect of progress or impact beyond a fleeting two fingers to authority. In the past I’ve proposed an approach that counter-strategies drawing on Situationist ideas of recuperation, arguing that this itself in itself can be turned to a positive approach, instead of recuperation (or strategic activity defusing radical thinking it can be subverted to make ideas and actions more impactful , engaging and significant.

The reason for this digression is an excellent seminar Jeremy (Howells) gave on Knowledge at a recent research retreat I helped organise for IDEAS. The underlying premise of his seminar was that knowledge cannot by its nature be transferred, so problamitising the whole concept of knowledge exchange or transfer. He argued that only information can be exchanged and it becomes knowledge in the recipient of the exchange. This has profound implications for the nature, fidelity and content of the knowledge that is ‘defused’ between members of any network of exchange.

Jeremy was drawing on economics, philosophy of knowledge and sociology but several members of IDEAS with backgrounds in business and entrepreneurship theory were diametrically opposed to this view that seems very comfertable to someone with my background. The exciting thing for me was the fact that this debate has to draw in notions of authorship and meaning that introduce a new dimension (and one I’m instamatly familiar with), into the debate about knowledge exchange. Things like de Certeau’s concept of proprietary distributed meaning and the value of negotiated meaning and exchange in communities and emerging framework of knowledge or understanding exchange becomes very significant in developing understandings of knowledge exchange in the more generally (ab)used sence.