A characteristic of today’s societies is the unceasing quest
for newness. Companies and other organizations are expected
to offer product innovations and variations or brand new
business models and services; individuals are expected to
reinvent themselves and express their creativity. The ‘new’
or novel polarizes, challenges, and attracts attention in
societies saturated with consumer goods and information.
Newness fascinates, intrigues, convinces or entertains,
thereby becoming a value in itself, a trigger of economic
dynamics.
The research program on “Cultural Sources of Newness” is
predicated on the thesis that newness is the core of
innovations. It grows out of multi-layered cultural
configurations, which we define as cultural sources.
Technical and institutional prerequisites to innovation have
been studied in detail, but little attention has been paid
to the cultural factors that trigger newness, nor to the
conditions under which newness is recognized and valued. It
is therefore on these factors and processes that the
research program focuses.
Three processes appear to be particularly significant for
the quality and viability of innovations: 1) the continuous
variation of cultural commonalities, 2) the evaluation of
newness, and 3) states of disequilibrium that occur in and
between cultures. We hypothesize that it is the interaction
between these three processes that determines the scope and
range of successful innovation.
The empirical fields of study in the research program are
derived from the spatial, temporal and social dimensions of
cultural configurations. Two projects are being pursued
along each of these dimensions, each of which examine
phenomena of different orders of magnitude. In addition, two doctoral dissertations, on
Creativity
and City, and
Lighting Design for City Spaces are being conducted in
connection with the core projects.
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