White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDENon the other, monarchies or councils that granted privileges (comparable to modern daypatents) or monopolies to publishers for lengthy periods thus exerting censorship overwhat could be read. These powers could also be wielded benignly such that privilegesmight be granted in larger numbers where regimes sought to stimulate literary creativity.In Holland (1995) the presence of non-linearity and variety in complex adaptivesystems generates path dependence as local rules of interaction change as the largersystem evolves and develops.4.5 Where Lies the Individual in Complex AdaptiveSystems?As can easily be seen from the above reasoning, complex adaptive systems theory isresolutely „structural,‟ at times making arch-structuralist Louis Althusser (Althusser &Balibar, 1970), with his notion of the individual being hailed or experiencing „interpellation‟from a structural element like ideology, seem almost humanistic at times. Accordingto Stacey (2001) individualistic explanations of social processes are vitiated forthree reasons. The first is that individualism supposes that individuals can encompass allthe knowledge required to make perfect decisions regarding social phenomena such asfirms or other organisations. Simon (1973) comprehensively rubbished that idea, hittingthe first nail into the coffin of rational-comprehensive planning in the process. Asecond, related criticism of individualism is that it presumes the individual can not onlyunderstand but predict. While this may be true in physics, life is not like physics, biologyis unpredictable and in Kauffman‟s (2008) judgement thereby „lawless‟. Nevertheless,we know that individuals matter, at least in regard to innovation, the subject of thiscontribution, even if we know they do not act alone. So in this regard complexityscience, brilliant as it is in contributing to a hugely improved way of understandingsocial processes like regional development, innovation and growth, is either mistaken,neglectful or somehow „over-socialised‟ in the way that Althusser was accused of beingover-determined in his structuralist explanation of (nearly) everything.The task is, therefore, to right this wrong not by throwing the complex adaptive systemsbaby out with the „structuralist‟ bathwater but by introducing a parent to towel thebaby down. Innovation analysis is a peculiarly suitable sub-discipline in which to performsuch system-individual articulation because it and its near neighbour inventionstudies are known by everyone to be fundamentally studies of collective enterprisewhich are always reduced to a named inventor or innovator, sometimes allowing two orthree but seldom more. Measures of invention like patents are the same because of thelegal individualism of contracts, responsibilities and accountability. Accordingly, theeffort of the sections of this Chapter that follow are devoted first to an analysis then to asynthesis which gives space to the concept of individual and collective action which isnevertheless consistent with the notion of institutional and organisational evolution83