Social and Cultural Dimensions of Innovation in Knowledge Societies

1 Social and Cultural Dimensions of Innovation in Knowledge Societies Eds. Jiří Loudín, Josef Hochgerner Filosofia ISBN 978-80-7007-353-7 9 788070 073537 cultural dimensions_obalka.indd 1 1/18/12 10:22 PM 1 2 3 Social and Cultural Dimensions of Innovation in Knowledge Societies 4 5 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF INNOVATION IN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES Edited by Jiří Loudín, Josef Hochgerner Prague 2020 6 Reviewed by Doc. Ing. Václav Liška, PhD. Doc. Ing. Karel Müller, CSc. Published © by , 2011 Institute of Philosophy Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague Edited © by Jiří Loudín and Josef Hochgerner, 2011 Design by Martin Pokorný, typesetting by Jana Andrlová Cover © Tereza Velíková, 2011 Copyright of the papers © held by the individual authors, unless otherwise noted, 2011 Printed by PBtisk, s.r.o., Příbram, Czech Republic ISBN 978-80-7007-353-7 (print book) ISBN 978-80-7007-592-0 (e-book) DOI 10.47376/filosofia.2012.1 7 Table of Contents Introduction 9 Part I SOCIAL AND CULTURAL SOURCES OF INNOVATION 13 Preparing for the Big Shift. The Capacity of Social Innovations in 21st Century’s World Society 19 Josef Hochgerner The Cultural Thesis in Knowledge Societies 43 Jiří Loudín Safe Innovations, Innovative Safety 67 Lucia Belyová, Gerhard Banse Public Engagement in Science: Current Debates in the Czech Republic 81 Adolf Filáček Part II REFLECTIONS ON INNOVATION IN SOCIETAL DYNAMICS 105 Innovation from the Outside in: How Relating the Concepts of “Actor-Network” and “Lifeworld” Can Help Us to Better Describe Innovation Processes 111 Alexander Degelsegger, Alexander Kesselring Innovations and Temporality: Reflections on Lévi-Strauss’ “Cold Societies” and Our “Warming” Science 139 Jan Maršálek Relationships between Technology and Culture in the Czech Tradition of Thought 151 Petr Machleidt 8 Preface Part III TRANSNATIONAL AND TRANSCULTURAL: TRANSFERS AND INTERACTIONS 163 The Potential of Transfer of Bilateral R&D Projects towards the European Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development 169 Klaus Schuch, Isabella Wagner, Elke Dall Re-learning from Japan: Managing Innovative Research and Technology Institutes 199 Balázs Borsi The chapter is not available due to copyright issue Innovation Performance in the EU and the Czech Republic: Results, Problems and Measures 239 Karel Mráček Evaluating the Contribution of EU-funded Projects to Prague Innovation Environment 255 Jakub Pechlát Zusammenfassung 265 List of authors 269 Name index 271 Jiří Loudín, Josef Hochgerner: Introduction 9 Introduction Introductions to publications on innovations usually open with a statement de- scribing them as fundamental driving force of contemporary societies as well as a pivotal theme in economic, political, and scientific public policies and dis- courses. Such theses can hardly be disputed. Innovation research advances with intensity comparable to the real innovation processes themselves. The fact that in innovation research there is a lot that still remains unclear only attests to the dynamics and creative character of innovation processes, where new problems, meanings and links constantly arise and previously isolated factors enter into new mutual interactions. This book focuses on social and cultural dimensions of innovations. It is not surprising that this aspect of innovations attracts growing attention. For one thing, it is the innovation process itself that develops, articulates, diversifies and, in the course of its expansion, absorbs new agents, fields and processes, within which new bonds and interactions emerge. These additional sources and drivers impart previously unknown dynamics and depth to innovations. And, for another thing, it is a reaction to the fact that innovation research has been dominated by economic approach for long period of time; in the past decades, economic aspects were studied with all due rigour and sophistication. The economic nature of innovation surely deserves and demands it, however, the complex character of contemporary innovation processes directs attention to other aspects as well. Nevertheless, it is not two parallel – one economic, the other social and cultural – streams of analysis running side by side what is at stake here but rather an interactive process full of feedbacks and overlaps reflecting the reality of innovation processes. Under the circumstances of changing social and cultural capacities of society it is the economic contents of innovation that changes as well. Innovations also transform in connection with social trends that have been labeled as the making of knowledge societies. Knowledge economy is based on invention and innovation – these are the only paths leading to economic success. Knowledge is highly appreciated in a society, where both knowledge- demand and knowledge-supply are strong, where tens of percents of population gain university education and thus large groups of people acquire the ability to orient themselves in complex processes, gain analytical skills and the power to solve complex problems. 10 Social and Cultural Dimensions of Innovation in Knowledge Societies Knowledge societies open new ways of both individual and social development but also brings new risks, imbalances, traps and paradoxes. This fact is related to the ambivalent nature of knowing – every knowledge gain also means the emergence of new questions and uncertainties; increased activity of social actors can bring to the fore the unpredictability of creative human action. In- creasing abstraction of human activities and large global interconnectivity make knowledge society fragile and vulnerable in a new and distinct way – the recent financial crisis is a case in point. This all accounts for future challenges – among others to innovations, chiefly for their nontraditional forms, especially non-technological and non-economic ones. Concepts of non-technological and non-economic innovation, not to say social innovation, attest to the ferment that reigns in the field of innovation studies today. As the real innovation activities reconfigure and diversify vis-à-vis new challenges, as their particular currents assume different meaning and weight and “mutate” in the course of new interactions, innovation research searches new definitions, notions and methods, its concepts both differentiate and synthesize. The relationship of technological and social innovation becomes prominent. Recent decades have been marked by the primacy of technological innovation, which was based on its undeniable success. Social dimension has been treated mainly as a “social context” – social prerequisites and consequences of technological progress. The aim of social intervention – social innovation in fact – was then to compensate for or to balance the impacts of technology or to optimize the social and cultural conditions for the development of technology. Nowadays, social innovation emancipates itself as an autonomous entity. Its new status is in essence derived from the urgent nature of social problems, which humanity faces – poverty, hunger, inequality, ageing, immigration. These ailments arise, persist and some of them even worsen sharply in spite of the vast technological accomplishments. That means that these problems are not solvable through technology – at least not if it will proceed in the same way as it had, so far. What needs to be changed is social practice – and the change of social practice is a largely accepted definition of social innovation. The relationship between social and technological innovation is also being reconceptualized. Undoubtedly, the dominant trend is emancipation and the strengthening of social innovation as a distinct human action with its own specific field of intervention. On the other side, the fact that there is no necessary antagonism between social and technological innovations is being emphasized. Social innovations often aim at changing the means of practice: what is being changed is how people do things – e.g., the instrumental, technical dimension of action is targeted. Technological innovations make sense only when they change something in social or personal lives of people. Some new technical systems Jiří Loudín, Josef Hochgerner: Introduction 11 are so tightly interconnected with specific social practices that a borderline between them can be hardly detected, they really build a seamless entity. “Social networks” are enabled by electronic networks. Close to social innovation is the cultural dimension of innovation. Culture may be understood as a set of values and practices distinctive for a specific group of people. Social practice has its strong cultural dimension and social change is also cultural change. Within innovation research, a “cultural turn” has taken place recently. Glo- bal standardization of economic, financial and organizational schemes and incentives did not lead to the standardization of innovation performance of individual – supranational, national, private, public – actors. This fact motivated a search for new explanations. More subtle and sophisticated instruments for boosting innovations were also sought after. Such new resources – but also new barriers to be removed – were found in the sphere of culture. One could even witness emergence of the concept of cultural determinism, which understands culture as a crucial factor in both the innovation dynamics and the persisting innovation differences. This brings us closer to the idea of cultural transfer – the imitation and adoption of the cultural patterns of innovation

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