01: Challenge of systemic innovation at the boundaries of 21C science
The challenge of systemic innovation at the boundaries of science of the 21st Century.
In its first round, this course had two distinct objectives.
One of them was to follow two streams of development from their origins:
- Information-technological developments and vision represented by Doug Engelbart
- Systems-scientific developments and vision represented by Erich Jantsch
and to see them merge together in our own time, and not the least at ITBA, into something uncommonly powerful, which brings transformative possibilities to a variety of domains.
We have seen, namely, that when the insights and techniques that resulted from those two streams are put together, what naturally emerges is a (need and a possibility for a) radical restructuring "of our various organizations", offering Industrial Revolution–like improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of human work. And more generally, evidence and insights were presented leading to the conclusion that all innovation can and needs to become systemic.
But there has been another, no less worthwhile objective and main point, that were only partially reached. I'll call it here (a bit awkwardly, I admit) "paradigm strategy". The point is that systemic innovation is a paradigm that belongs to an even larger, arguably much larger paradigm. And that what our conditions are calling for, and what we may be able to bootstrap through systemic innovation, is this much larger or comprehensive paradigm shift.
I propose that we gracefully conclude our initial year of working together as follows:
- I am putting (to be continued...)