3 - The dynamics of innovation

Abstract

Knowledge and space develop together as a dynamic system of innovation. This chapter examines the ways in which innovation can be understood in terms of physical dynamics. We borrow from the notion of ‘social physics’ that, having recently gone out of favour due to problems of reductionism, is now being reassessed as a powerful model of innovative social and technological change. We note how symbols are tools for capturing and representing innovative, socio-spatial change, and how the metaphors of ‘flows’ and ‘waves’ serve to describe several ways in which knowledge is produced, exchanged and formulated. This chapter also draws on well-known models of innovation adoption, showing the flows of innovations through participant populations over time. We examine models of innovations based on equilibriums within the adoption landscape, as well as probabilistic tendencies towards changes within the system. Other aspects of ‘social physics’ are introduced based on the splitting of innovative groups based on specialist interests, and how knowledge embedded in technologies comes to mediate and enframe these specialisms. We also examine the critical nature of this splitting, influenced by thresholds of tolerance and proximity within the landscape.