TALE: A Possible Theme called “Blade with Blood”

Oliver Ding

Follow

Published in

TALE500

6 min readFeb 13, 2023

--

The Risk of Innovation

The above picture represents a Possible Theme called “Blade with Blood”.

Name: Blade with Blood
Clue: The Risk of Innovation
Type: knowledge theme
Contributors: Jason Frasca, Iain Kerr, and Jonathan Edwards
Reference: Etymology
Related Themes: Product Langue

The theme of “Blade with Blood” was inspired by a post about the definition of Innovation on Linkedin.

Jason Frasca started the conversation with an argument about using the word “Innovation”.

Look, innovation is not the only word that’s been hijacked, diluted, and whipped beyond a singular understanding.
That’s what happens to words…
They evolve, or devolve, depending on the term and circumstance, to have more than one meaning.
But more than one meaning works -
You can generally tell which meaning a word is using based on context.
It’s words like innovation that befuddle me.
Because the context in which innovation sits is too broad a spectrum to be contextifiable.
The definition has become lost to mainstream and now refers to a vague concept as opposed to a definition.

This topic attracts me because it is related to “Conceptual Heterogeneity”.

What’s Conceptual Heterogeneity? It refers to different people using the same word to express different conceptual meanings. It leads to Knowledge Fragmentation inside one discipline. Also, it raises the cost of cross-boundary collaborative projects.

I replied with the following message.

“How can you claim something is something without having an understanding of what that something is?”
Because people are using the term “Innovation” as a normal word. This is freedom.
If we start talking about “Innovation” seriously, we need a working definition for discussion.
If we want to establish a new theory on “Innovation”, we need to redefine it and use our own framework to support the new definition.
Eventually, more and more knowledge creators add a new definition to “Innovation”, and we lose the shared conceptual reality and language.
Knowledge creation leads to “Conceptual Heterogeneity” which refers to different people using the same word to express different conceptual meanings.
Personally, I think “Innovation” is a term for evaluating a final result in common sense.
If a product fails, people wouldn’t call it Innovation. However, we might find that it is a really brand-new idea.
What’s the difference between “Invention” and “Innovation”?

Jason Frasca replied:

Certainly, there is the freedom to use any word in any content Oliver Ding — but if c claiming something is innovative — should the claimer be able to articulate what and how their thing is innovative?

I replied:

If we talk about word-meaning, then we can find it in a dictionary:
: a new idea, method, or device : novelty.
: the introduction of something new.
Innovation Definition & Meaning — Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
We can’t only see its definition if we talk about it as a concept. For example, let’s see Larry Keeley’s Ten Types of Innovation (2013).
“Innovation is the creation of a viable new offering.” (p.5)
“Innovating requires identifying the problems that matter and moving through them systematically to deliver elegant solutions.”(p.6–7)
There are some details under this definition:
1. Innovation is not invention
2. Innovations have to earn their keep
3. Very little is truly new in innovation
4. Think beyond products
Do you agree with his definition? I don’t agree.
But, we know he is talking about a business activity that aims to produce a new product. Moreover, he is using it to frame a creative space for his knowledge framework.
His knowledge framework is more important than his definition.

In fact, I am using the Concept Dynamics framework for my thoughts. See the diagram below.

The Concept Dynamics Framework emphasizes that every theoretical concept has three basic aspects: ecological reality, conceptual reality, and linguistic reality.

Ecological Reality refers to the real experience of discovery in the real world from the perspective of researchers.
Conceptual Reality refers to the outcome of the creative conceptualization process.
Linguistic Reality refers to expressional form with verbal and rhetorical effects.

Based on the framework, I believe that an ideal theoretical concept should not have intrinsic contradictions between these three aspects and extrinsic contradictions between these aspects and context which means the dynamic background of the concept. Thus, it is hard work to create an ideal theoretical concept. The harder work is detaching an existing concept from its original context and attaching it to a new context by reconceptualizing it with new meaning.

The original purpose of the Concept Dynamics framework is for reviewing and developing theoretical concepts. However, I recently realized that it can be used for discussing theme-based communicative actions such as a discussion about a topic on Linkedin and other social media platforms.

If we follow Jason Frasca’s argument, then we can focus on the Linguistic Reality of the word “Innovation”. This direction requires some techniques, for example, using Etymology.

This morning, I tried it with Chinese Etymology.

In Chinese, Innovation refers to two characters. See the attached picture:

The first character is “创 chuàng”. Originally, it was 刱 which means digging a well for the first time. Also, the source of 创(chuāng) was 刅 which means blade with blood.

The second character is “新 xīn”. Originally, it was 薪 which means felling wood with an ax.

Wow, this is significant insight! Now we can discover three aspects of Innovation from Chinese Etymology.

1. Originality

Innovation should be the activity of doing something or making something for the first time.

2. Risky

“blade with blood” means that Innovation has potential risks such as loss or hurting others.

3. Affordance

“felling wood with an ax” means taking double affordances: the affordance of natural things and the affordance of human-made artifacts.

This is an interesting discovery, so I made a possible theme about it.

I want to use this possible theme to highlight an important aspect of Innovation: Risk.

You can use this theme to guide your journey of engaging with “the Rick of Innovation”.

TALE: A Possible Theme called “Blade with Blood”

1. Originality

2. Risky

3. Affordance

Related Articles

Written by Oliver Ding