Meaning - An Unexplored Path of Innovation Åsa Öberg1* and Roberto Verganti2 Department of Information Design, Mälardalen University, Sweden1 School of Management, Politecnico di Milano, Italy1,2
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[email protected] *Corresponding Author Received 27 August 2014; received in revised form 30 November 2014; accepted 9 December 2014 Abstract Over the last ten years, the practice and research around innovation has been dominated by one perspective: innovation is an activity of “creative problem solving”. According to this per- spective, users have problems or needs, and innovation implies an understanding of those problems and the creation of better ideas to solve them (Kelley, 2001, Chesbrough, 2003, Brown, 2009, Martin, 2009). There is, however, a level of innovation that has been overlooked: the level of meaning. People are continuously searching for meaning. Whenever they do something in life, there is a meaning behind that action, a purpose, and a “why”. They also use products and services that support this search for meaning. For example, they use fast robots with the purpose of improving the productivity of a process. Firms often assume that meanings exist “out there” in the market. They just have to be understood, not innovated. Therefore, they search for new solutions, a new “how”, to serve this existing purpose better: a faster robot, for example. However, people are not only searching for new solutions to existing problems. They are also searching for new meanings because their life keeps changing and because they are delighted by the discovery of new directions. For example, hospitals buy slow robots, such as the DaVinci system, the leading prostatectomy device, not to replace doctors and increase productivity, but to help them in complex operations.