[Originally written in June 2007, unless otherwise noted. See the The Practice of Theory: Prefacing the Draft Enterprise Model.]
Introduction:
This is a germinal outline for a very open business model, for a very open and adaptive type of enterprise.
Open Conceptual was founded for the purpose of developing intellectual resources, and one such resource is the business model itself: “innovating the company’s business model… itself is a part of the company’s innovation task.”[1]
To even call it a “business model” is misleading. This is more correctly an “enterprise model,” because the enterprise involves scientific, artistic, commercial and civic aims equally.
The Scientific Side:
This is an experiment, an attempt to make a conceptual leap towards a new model of human enterprise, leaving behind as much conceptual baggage from the old models as possible. What is meant here by “conceptual” is any idea, image, word, metaphor, principle, etc. that ‘frames’ the way we learn, think, work, live, and create.
It is common to talk about ‘new ways’ of working and living, but we tend to do so using the old vocabularies and frames[2]; so the “leap” never gets off the ground[3]. Most attempts either are pulled apart by conflicting sets of inertia or eventually settle back into old models and methods.
The focus of Open Conceptual’s work is at the threshold where the “leap” may either fail or succeed. This requires employing the enterprise itself as an experiment — keeping it dynamic and continually reworking it in order to observe the results.
But the fact that Open Conceptual is an experiment doesn’t mean that it must conform to established scientific methods. In fact, it is precisely those methods — and their underlying attitude and assumptions — that are under investigation.[4]
This is not a perfectly controlled, closed experiment; it is open – both outwardly and inwardly. In the first place this means opening out into new perspectives, generating insight. Secondly it means being open to a fairly high degree of chaos – playing – and hoping to observe something previously unimaginable.
More simply, this means attempting to generate hypotheses, not prove them — that’s what traditional institutions are for. (And Open Conceptual is not an attempt to undermine those institutions; it is an attempt to build beyond them.)
Technology and culture are changing rapidly; conventional, ’safe’ methods of inquiry may not be able to keep pace. Something new may be needed.
Open Conceptual may not be that “something new” which could possibly deal with the full scope of emergent complexity; but it can at least contribute, helping to generate insight, cultivating the necessary conditions for broader and deeper appreciation — towards a general theory of creativity.
The Commercial Side:
A new ‘theory of creativity’ seems to be both necessary and attainable in light of new realities. Necessary because of increasing complexity: we need an articulated general concept of motivation, learning, progress, and growth. Attainable because of the tools and resources that are now available — like the web.
Open Conceptual’s core resource is not so much the theory itself — which may never be complete, given the nature of such ideas — but the activity involved in developing it. This works to generate ‘incidental resources’: knowledge and competencies. These can hardly be anticipated or planned for; the most useful ones are often the least expected: they occur as insights.
Open Conceptual’s evolving business model is based on utilizing these incidental resources – the growing body of insights – to generate capital in order to finance ongoing development – a process which in turn produces more more effective knowledge and competencies.[5]
(The long-term goal represents the scientific and civic elements of the Open Conceptual attitude; the short-term practices represent the commercial and artistic elements.)
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Incidental resources’ might take the form of book and business proposals, consulting services (creative-conceptual development, ideation, training, communications, etc.), publishing, public speaking, media production, conference promotion, art shows, or some medium that doesn’t even exist yet. (Actually, “preparing for emerging forms of media,” expresses Open Conceptual’s mission quite well.)
The Artistic Side:
When we think of different modes of creativity we think of painting, literature, music, poetry, architecture, etc. But creativity enters into every aspect of human life — especially during stages of learning and development.[6]
Psychologists who examine creative individuals often include scientists, civic leaders, business people and politicians in their work[7]. Recognizing opportunities and solving problems in any field involves the same general processes as more ‘artistic’ modes of creativity.
Furthermore, the changing nature of work through the past century has generated entirely new creative specializations. The type of person who might have became an ‘artist’ in 1850 might have instead became an ‘art director’ in 1950 — think of Andy Warhol, who first established himself illustrating shoe ads.
The design-attitude is now spreading from products and advertisements to the development of whole companies — new industries even. This is most clearly demonstrated by recent innovations in professional education, especially at business schools. (See, for example, U of T’s Rotman School of Business; also see Stanford’s d-school.) And let’s not neglect to note that such programs are also designed.
Open Conceptual is about penetrating more broadly and deeply in this vein – using depth of understanding to generate greater breadth of relevance, and vice versa — to design the philosophical frameworks of any mode of creativity and enterprise.
Civic:
Above all, Open Conceptual is based on the notion that a better world begins with education — in the most general sense of the word. Not just in formal or institutional settings, but in the sense that each individual has a personal responsibility for their own competencies and knowledge.
Cultivating knowledge and competencies — broadening and deepening our understanding of the world and our effectiveness in it — is intrinsically rewarding. These are ‘generative goods’ that we can seek as individuals which actually enable others to do the same, promoting greater opportunities in a “good society.”[8]
Open Conceptual intends to become an advocate for education outside of its traditional settings, to encourage people to responsibly cultivate knowledge and competencies, and to facilitate some of the ‘conversations’ which thus emerge.[9]
By doing so, intrinsic or subjective creativity may develop into objective accomplishments — scientific discoveries, works of art, commercial enterprises, civic institutions. These objects then form the structure through which even greater creative opportunities may be found and pursued.[10]
Creativity is meaningless unless it results in something objective, but results are meaningless unless they facilitate subjective well being — happiness — by making us more effective and appreciative in life.
The Creative Discipline:
Mastering ‘creativity’ involves gaining insight into a wealth of disciplines and domains. For example, insights gained in ‘general creativity’ promote a realignment of understanding in other disciplines — like psychology and philosophy of science. This is more about realignment — upgrading and downgrading the importance of specific concepts in relation to each other – rather than refutations or (dis)proofs.
‘Creativity’ doesn’t really exist as a distinct discipline or domain. There isn’t really a core theoretical foundation to refute or disprove; there are merely some ideas that have been suggested from other fields.
[Work in progress; much more to come soon…]
Notes:
[1] Henry Chesbrough, Open Business Models, 2006.
[2] Much philosophical energy of the past century has been devoted to the ‘philosophy of language,’ which involves analysis of how language relates to, or corresponds with, the world, things, ideas, ‘truth,’ etc. In the latter half of the century ‘cognitive science’ has emerged to study the same types of problems from a more empirical, neurological, computational approach. I only mention these fields in order to point out that I know enough about them to know what I don’t know; or rather, I know enough to know that I don’t care to know more – for now. Anyways, I associate “vocabularies” with Richard Rorty and “frames” with George Lakoff. If you want a good introduction to the broader field of ideas, start with Steven Pinker.
[3] [This note added 12 Sept 07] Since writing this I’ve discovered that another “creative generalist,” Steve Hardy, who blogs at http://www.creativegeneralist.com,/ frequently mentions this notion of a creative “leap” in the same sense.
[4] Consider Karl Popper’s influential theory that science proceeds by positing falsifiable hypotheses rather than ‘proving’ them. See Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ science. Also see Paul Feyerabend’s more radical position of ‘anarchic science’; as well as Micheal Polanyi’s concepts of ‘personal knowledge,’ ‘tacit knowing,’ and ‘heuristic passion,’ and their effects on science.
[5] Using what Chris Argyris calls “double-loop learning,” which means changing or developing our “boundary conditions” — such as goals – whereas “single-loop learning” would be to simply change the way we maintain stability or performance within those boundary conditions.
[6] Now more than ever. See Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind (2005).
[7] Specifically Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1997), and Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinski, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (1993).
[8] The importance of ‘competence’ and effectiveness (or “effectance”) covered in Robert White’s 1959 paper, “Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence”, and competence has become a focal point of psychology since then. “Intrinsic motivation” is commonly associated with psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. See Deci’s 1996 popularization (with Richard Flaste), Why We Do What We Do. The concept of ’generativity’ found its way onto this page via psychologist Dan McAdams’s Stories We Live By (1993). And the “good society” is a reference to sociologist Robert Bellah et al’s Good Society (1991), which provided much of the direction the theme of this work. For a different perspective on the same theme see Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000).
[9] For an explanation of the full sense of the term ’conversation’ as used here, see Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). And to observe the value of this conversation in action, read the many comments made by some of the world’s most eminent philosophers, about Rorty’s recent passing.
[10] For a more comprehensive idea of the direction I’m going here, consider Anthony Giddens’s concept of “structuration.”
[Originally written in June 2007, unless otherwise noted. See the The Practice of Theory: Prefacing the Draft Enterprise Model.]
