Commemities (2): Defining Narrative-Centric Innovation

In this series I present a proposal for narrative-centered analytics that may automatically adapt to the unpredictable changes that drive the innovation economy, and that might be a formula for zero-assumption analytics. It builds on the idea that people connect memes and memes connect people. A commemity is defined as {community + shared memes} or, equivalently, memes and people holding each other together in a cluster.

Photo from ‘Tales Untold’ (Joseph Ollivier)

In this series:
1. Narrative-Centric Analytics
2. Defining Narrative-Centric Innovation
3. Benefits of Defining Innovation as ‘Introduction of New Narrative’
4. Analyzing Trends in an Innovation Economy
to be continued…..

Innovation is Always the Introduction of New Narrative

Let me suggest the most general definition of innovation: the introduction of new value. This covers all definitions of innovation to date (except as a synonym to invention). Narrative-centric innovation is semantically almost identical.

> Innovation is the Introduction of New Value
and value is created by relating, so…

> Innovation is the Introduction of New Ways of Relating
and new ways of relating means new narrative, so…

>> Innovation is the Introduction of New Narrative !

The smartphone introduced a new way of relating to telephones, communications and the Internet. The Internet introduced a new way of relating to all kinds of things and people and continues to do so. Telephones introduced a new way of relating to people not physically present. My great-grandfather wrote in his memoirs: “There is now a new thing called ‘telephone’ with which you can talk with people who are several miles away. Why ever should you want to do something like that?”

Innovation always means the introduction of new narrative. Does introducing new narrative always mean innovation? No. It cannot be the formal definition of innovation. But neither can technology and business, so a narrative-centric innovation paradigm is just as feasible.

We rightly consider these as groundbreaking innovations:

• Tech innovation: The smartphone, keyhole surgery and antidepressants;
• Business innovation: Credit cards, online auctions and crowd funding;
• Social innovation: Wikipedia and open-source software development.

But these are NOT innovations:

• A guitar string made from a high-tech alloy that is superconducting up to -100F (physicists will drool) that makes no difference for guitar players or anyone else dealing with guitars;
• A disposable hamburger wrapper secretly placed in orbit in a space shuttle before being delivered to the hamburger joint where it is being used for wrapping hamburgers;
• A new nameless contraption that nobody knows what it does.

Now to the point: consider these important innovations. They did not involve any new technologies or business models whatsoever — but they introduced new narratives that made people relate in new ways:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy;
• Mother’s Day;
• Impressionism.

We speak about technological innovation and business innovation, but that does not cover all innovation. Narrative innovation covers everything, because every innovation must introduce a new narrative.

Here is an example that I shows the power and potential of thinking in terms of ‘narrative innovation’ :

A Narrative Innovation Scenario: Business Green Attire

Here is a suggestion for an innovation that requires no technology and no business model. It’s a name and a narrative — that’s all. It’s called ‘business green’ attire. Business green is a new dress code that will make us happier, create a huge market and help save the planet. In major cities worldwide hundreds of millions of people are wearing clothes that are unsuitable for the climate only because business etiquette requires it. This goes especially for hot climates. People are spending all day in air-conditioned rooms or travel between air-conditioned rooms in air-conditioned cars because they are too heavily dressed for the weather.

Air-conditioning consumes electricity. Cooling office space consumed 116 trillion BTUs of electricity and public assembly space 82 trillion BTUs in the U.S. in 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. If public assembly space is used for business half the time, then dress-code consumes roughly 160 Trillion BTUs per year, costing $368 million in electricity bills. That is the equivalent of seven nuclear power plants, or 1.4 billion gallons of gas (a carbon footprint of 11,300,000 tons of CO2), which is equivalent to the carbon footprint of the 30 billion miles of car travel by the 25 million Americans who drive less than five miles to work. Dress code leaves few convenient alternatives to the car. The carbon footprint for traditional dress code is double: air-conditioning and short travels by airconditioned cars.

Business green would offer urban citizens the opportunity to bike to work, eliminating the need for up to fourteen nuclear power plants. Apart from reducing the carbon footprint it would be a remedy for the obesity-epidemic affecting two-thirds of all Americans , which could save each one of them on average $1500 (42%) in healthcare, as well as improve quality of life and well-being. Averaged over the 25 million urban commuters, healthcare costs would be reduced by up to $25 billion per year.

This saves money and workforce that can be reallocated to new growth industries, creating more and better jobs. We will need clothes that look good for every occasion, send the right signals at the right time — a cultural code trope — and that manage hotter, colder, drier and wetter weather conditions, so that we become less dependent on climate systems. The technological opportunity will be further boosted by the need for clothes for people bicycling to work, feasible in all weather conditions, providing there are appropriate clothes. It could transform the city landscape, spreading traffic (by bicycle) more evenly, abolishing traffic jams and offering business opportunities for small shops and cafes throughout a city, not only along major roads and in shopping centers. Smartphone apps would find vast new markets in supporting the shift. Business Green would remove the obstacle blocking a cultural shift, improving health, cities and creating jobs in almost across all business activities, starting with clothing design, manufacture and fashion. It would boost increased efforts in clothes technology, anthropological research and material design. Public policy and public-private partnerships would be rejuvenated, and so on.

What if the next president of the United States were to go on TV on his first day in the White House, remove his tie and jacket and say that he is introducing business green as the new dress code for public administration and that his staff will use bicycles more frequently inside DC? That would be innovation.

This is just an example how the narrative-centric innovation paradigm can introduce new innovation scenarios. Disruptive narrative innovation, in this case disrupting the incumbent dress code (which is a narrative), demonstrates the opportunities of cultural shift, because the new narrative hooks into the old and replaces it in ways that are natural and intuitive. The ripple effect of disrupting markets is less obvious when innovation is defined as the introduction of new technology- or business-models, the ripples when one thing leads to another is all about the narrative.

In narrative-centric innovation, the creative use of metaphors and analogies become innovation tools, literally.

Next post: Benefits of defining innovation as introduction of new narrative