Plasticity: Toward a Better Understanding of Innovation

Abstract

While most studies of innovation focus on the idea or solution itself, such investigations typically view innovation as isolated from the system within which it emerges; therefore, such investigations are incomplete. From philosophy, the idea of synergetics provides a more holistic perspective on innovation by asserting that “emergence” and “enslavement” are necessary for delineating its complexity (Meynhardt et al., J Bus Res 69(8):2981–2989, 2016). In this chapter, we build a framework for thinking about how innovation emerges in complex, dissonant environments (Chandler et al., J Serv Res 22(1):75–89, 2018). The framework is based on plasticity, which is the ability of a system to take and retain form. Because disruption has become the new norm, a keen understanding of plasticity has become fundamental for managing value in the digital economy (Chandler et al., J Serv Res 22(1):75–89, 2018). Based on the plasticity principles of recursivity, temporality, complementarity, and continuity, the proposed framework is then used in subsequent sections to explicate innovation viewed from micro, meso, and macro perspectives.