from Leis Network - Organizational development and complexity
Invariance and replication are essential to science. To the extent that science is beautiful, it demonstrates universal laws which conform to theories hard won by historical giants of intellect. The symmetry of science is its universality.
Innovation is essentially different. The concepts of adaptability, evolution and emergence all center on building blocks that produce aberration, variance and eventually, hopefully, inevitably something new. Science studies replication. Innovation is unexpected.
There is something inherently contradictory in the application of scientific method to the study of innovation and complexity, which at least partly explains the adjectives of mysticism hurled at complexity research, most assuredly as an insult. But is it?
Complexity, despite its frustrating results, remains the focus of organizational science research simply because of its obvious promise. Unfortunately most of that research is bent on identifying mathematical formulas and constructs for innovation. Is that approach self-defeating? But what other approach is there? My research and experience suggests that there is an alternative.
Someone once said that if we are extremely lucky, we have one original idea in a lifetime. I would go further. If we are really lucky, we realize it is an original idea, and we convince someone it is not absurd, and we work like hell until we see it in action.
Think. Build. Measure. Start again.
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