The Dialectic Room: A new metaphor for innovation

A Meta-diagram for playing with Pairs of Opposite Themes

The Dialectic Room (Oliver Ding, 2021)

The above diagram is a meta-diagram for applying dialectic logic to cope with structural tensions. The original source of the dialectic room is the “germ-cell” diagram for Project-oriented Activity Theory (see the diagram below).

On Jan 3, 2021, I published an article titled Activity U (VIIII): Project-oriented Activity Theory which introduces Andy Blunden’s Project-oriented theoretical approach of Activity with a series of diagrams.

In order to develop the theoretical foundation of “Project as a unit of Activity”, Blunden adopts Hegel’s Logic and Vygotsky’s theory about Concept as theoretical resources. The process is documented in three books: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), and Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014).

One of three significant notions of Blunden’s approach is “germ-cell”. According to Blunden, “…in order to understand a complex process as an integral whole or gestalt, we have to identify and understand just its simplest immediately given part — a radical departure from the ‘Newtonian’ approach to science based on discovering intangible forces and hidden laws” (2020)

Blunden has given us several successful examples of applying the idea of “germ-cell” for social science, such as Hegel’s formulation of the idea, Marx’s Capital, and Vygotsky’s five ideas.

Can we apply the idea of “germ-cell” to diagramming for social science?

I accepted this challenge with a concrete task: designing a series of diagrams for Blunden’s Project-oriented Activity Theory with a germ-cell diagram. This task echoes my ideas about “meta-diagram, diagram and diagram system”. A germ-cell diagram is a special type of meta-diagram which can easily generate a diagram system with the same intrinsic spatial logic. A typical structure of a diagram system is a multiple-level analysis system. The first challenge of adopting a germ-cell diagram is to design a spatial logic which can apply to different levels of a multiple-level diagram system. In other words, we only need one spatial logic for the whole system since the one spatial logic is a whole.

The above diagram is a diagram of Project-oriented Activity Theory. It is an expanded version of the original germ-cell diagram.

A Metaphor for Tough Situations

The Dialectic Room is a metaphor too. We can consider a tough situation with structural tension as a room with two windows and one door.

• a tough situation = a room
• a structural tension = a pair of Opposite Themes = two windows
• a final action = a door

A room is a container which separates inside space and outside space. There are some actions people can do within a room. I pay attention to one special type of action: connect to the outside space from the inside space. Let’s call it “Process”.

The two windows are interfaces which refer to two “Tendencies”, Window1 refers to “Tendency 1” while Window 2 refers to “Tendency 2”. Each window has its own view of the outside space.

Finally, there is a door which allows people to actually go out of the room. The door refers to “Orientation” which represents a direction of a real action of going out of the inside space.

Once you get into the outside space, you can consider the new space as a new room and repeat the diagram.

This is a special type of spatial logic. The terms such as “Process”, “Tendency” and “Orientation” are placeholders of texts for describing the spatial logic. From the perspective of my diagram theory, the pure meta-diagram doesn’t need texts. For instance, the Yin-yang symbol or Taijitu is a meta-diagram, can you find one text from it? However, we can add some texts as placeholders to a pure meta-diagram in order to better describe it.

Structural Tensions

In order to use the dialectic room, you have to discover the structural tensions behind a tough situation.

Structural Tensions can be boundary, distance, difference, heterogeneity, contradiction, complementation, etc.

If we can turn one or more structural tensions into creative opportunities, then we could find the way of life innovation.

The next step is using text to describe structural tensions into Pairs of Opposite Themes. For example, I find many pairs of opposite themes from my career experiences:

• Public v.s. Private
• Community v.s. Family
• Non-profit v.s. Profit
• Media v.s. Action
• Creativity v.s. Curativity

The “Public v.s. Private” refers to my public blogging before 2014 and my interest in personal private notes after 2014. I started paying attention to biography studies and I found many biography studies are based on personal private notebooks. This dimension also led to personal knowledge and private learning groups.

The “Community v.s. Family” refers to my active online communities activities before 2014 and complexity of my family activities after 2014. This dimension is about work/life balance.

The “Non-profit v.s. Profit” refers to my non-profit projects which are online communities and my works on web/mobile app development and design.

The “Media v.s. Action” refers to my early career in media business and creative marketing communication and recent action-centered product design and theoretical approach development.

The “Creativity v.s. Curativity” refers to my learning on Creativity studies and my own theoretical approach about Curativity.

The Dialectic Logic for Personal Innovation

We can adopt Hegel’s Dialectic (see the diagram below) to understand the Pairs of Opposite Themes. We can consider Theme 1 as Thesis and Theme 2 as Antithesis. By adopting Hegel’s Dialectic, the Fit between Theme 1 and Theme 2 means finding the Synthesis between Thesis and Antithesis.

The dialectic room is another visual layout of the dialectic logic. Now let’s adopt Hegel’s theory of Concept to understand Themes.

According to Andy Blunden, “As Hegel explained, every concept exists as Individual, Particular and Universal. These three moments of the concept are never completely in accord. There is always a measure of dissonance between them, and this is manifested in the dynamics of the concept. What an individual means when they use the word is never quite the same as the meaning produced in any other context.” (2012, p.295)

Themes are Concepts too. If we want to fit a pair of opposite themes, we can fit them in three sub-dimensions: Individual dimension, Particular dimension, and Universal dimension.

In Nov 2019, I did a career reflection and discovered a new career theme by fitting a pair of opposite themes together. The career reflection focused on my internet activities over from 2004 to 2014. I found there is a Pair of Opposite Themes there. My daily job was working on a web/mobile startup which is a profit business. However, I spent most of my spare time on non-profit online communities for social learning, open education, free culture, etc.

I didn’t pay attention to the contrast of this pair of opposite themes. I considered them as “daily work/spare time work”. For example, I developed some themes from my non-profit online activities. In 2014, I used the theme of Internet for GOOD to highlight the social impact of my internet activities during 2004 to 2014. In Dec 2017, I used the theme of Nomad of Community to highlight the constancy of my activities of community building because I always joined a community or started a community.

In Nov 2019, I realized that I could fit the theme of Non-profit and the theme of Profit together. I coined a term Action-centered Internet to highlight the commonness of them. I found my daily job was making products and tools which enable people to take actions. Obviously, I want to work on something which could support people’s actions. My preference on the Internet is not consuming content, or entertainment.

If we use Hegel’s terms, then the theme Profit is a Thesis while the theme Non-profit is the Antithesis. The theme Action-centered Internet is the Synthesis. We have to note that Action-centered Internet is a new Thesis because it points to a new Pair of Opposite Themes: “Action|Content”.

Since a new career theme breaks the old frame of our career experience, it could lead to personal innovation. The theme Action-centered Internet guided me to explore more pentional directions of Internet-based innovation.

You can find more details in the original article Personal Innovation as Career-fit.

The Dialectic Logic for Business Innovation

On July 12, 2021, I published a post titled D as Diagramming: Strategic Value Proposition and shared a diagram which was inspired by Michael Porter’s ideas on Value Proposition.

Porter defines the value proposition as the answer to three fundamental questions:
1. Which customers are you going to serve?
2. Which needs are you going to meet?
3. What relative price will provide acceptable value for customers and acceptable profitability for the company?

I expanded the framework with the Tripartness meta-diagram and named the outcome Strategic Value Proposition.

Tripartness is one of a set of meta-diagrams I designed in past years. The Tripartness meta-diagram can be expanded to a Diagram Network.

The above picture shows the process of diagram blending. The Tripartness diagram has two pairs of concepts:

• Corner and Zone
• Center and Context

In order to understand these concepts, we can use the following three diagrams:

• Corner: The Dialectic Room
• Zone: The Interactive Zone
• Center and Context: The Hierarchical Loops

For the Tripartness Diagram, each corner can be expanded to a dialectic room. For example, the picture below highlights a Corner of the Strategic Value Proposition diagram.

There are three words in this corner:

• Interest: the core of the corner
• Form and Brand: two themes

The Interest Corner refers to the perceiving process of value. At the beginning, a potential customer doesn’t own or use a product, so he only can perceive information about the product from his surrounding world. There are only two types of information about the product:

• Form: visual information which presents the look, structure, dynamics, size, color, etc. It offers clues for perceiving a product’s functions. In other words, what does it look like?
• Brand: narrative information which presents the emotions, cultural values, stories, rhetorical messages, ranking, word of mouth, etc. This type of information offers clues for evaluating a product’s reputation. In other words, can I trust it?

If a firm can offer the above two types of information to potential customers, then they could successfully attract people’s attention and stimulate their interest in buying.

Now, let’s adopt the Dialectic Room diagram to make a new diagram for understanding the Interest corner deeply.

For the Interest Corner, I highlight the following several concepts:

• Self and Other
• Similarities and Differences
• Storytelling

The diagram can be applied to discuss Customers and Competitors. I will talk about Customers, readers can apply the same method to think about Competitors.

For Customers, the room is their present life which is full of similarities. Self refers to a potential customer while Other refers to people from the customer’s surrounding environment. Self only can receive the above two types of information from Other, either the firm or other people. If the information is similar to the customer’ present life, then he won’t be interested in the product. The firm has to make a difference in order to bring the customer from his present life to a new life world. The strategy of storytelling could focus on Form, Brand, or Both. If the firm can’t offer a different form, then they could offer a different brand with a different cultural value or others.

The Chobani Flip is an example of the first strategy: Making a difference on Form. They just design a new type of container of yogurt and ask consumers to flip the smaller part in order to pour topping into yogurt.

The Make Love Not War shirt is an example of the second strategy: Making a difference on Brand with a cultural value. Consumers buy this T-shirt because they embrace the value behind the text message.

You can find more details from the original article: D as Diagramming: The Dialectic Room and Value Engagement.

Just for fun…

If you don’t find tough situations in your life. You can just play the dialectic room with pairs of opposite themes. It can be an intellectual game too!

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