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Depth & Interdependency
Next to the problem of holism and the need to broaden our scope for inclusion, there is also a problem with depth and contextual richness. Case (2011), Slavin (2016), Haines (2017), Glabau (2018), and Payne (2020) argue for more awareness about the increasing complexity of human-technology entanglements and for studying these systems with a multitude of approaches. When innovating then, we need to consider not just the meta-persona including gender, job, income, interests and apps, but the nodes of the system within which a person develops and represents a large number of different identities playing certain roles in the context of the system. Not only do we have intersubjective lifeworlds in the physical world, but also in virtual ones – which Case (2011) calls “second selves”. Haines (2017) pointed out that in our era of machine-learned and algorithm-trained solutions, these machine representations of multiple individual identities start to live on in their own ways, infusing a sort of technological representation of human selves into algorithms, and thereby mixing a priori values from the designers and developers of the solution with those ones of its users.
In a sense, we train algorithms and algorithms train us through the broad network of technological touchpoints in our everyday life. Thus, when we innovate, we have to develop literacy for how we shape this system and how it shapes our worlds in turn. It is this highly complex phenomenon that we need to reflect on when envisioning futures, for which aspirations and desired identities are pathing the way. I think – or maybe I fear – that this kind of reflection on the effects humans have on technology and vice versa from a micro-level upwards has little room in typical innovation frameworks – often not going much beyond the subjective feeling of the innovator. Thus, when building products and services that should contribute to better futures, we have to understand these human-technology relations, interdependencies and alternating influences, into which our innovations will ultimately get embedded.
Responsibility
With great power comes great responsibility, and clearly it is the innovator’s responsibility and power to decide on who to involve and who to exclude in the process of innovation. Modern theories and frameworks such as actor-network-theory, phenomenology and postphenomenology argue (even if in slightly different ways) that we are the result of our surroundings; that we make decisions as the consequence of the socio-technical networks we are part of; and that we think and act in certain ways based on past experiences which we embody in our everyday life. Decisions in innovation are, therefore, the result of the production and translation of knowledge by networks of human and non-human actors (Latour 1987 & 2005). Knowledge in ANT is nothing more than the result of a “lot of hard work in which (…) bits and pieces (…) are juxtaposed into a patterned network” (Law 1992), which the innovator influences in every step. Consequently, innovation too is only a “process of translating (forcing, bending, seducing, organizing) a multitude of elements into the hands of a few powerful representatives” (Blok and Elgaard Jensen 2011). Every innovator, thus, is only the result of personal past experiences and personal networks of actors he or she is integrated into (Andersen et al. 2015).
With the privilege to be one of the powerful representatives, the modern innovator is often more of an innovation facilitator, staging a temporary space for creation, as Clausen and Gunn have argued earlier in their piece called From the Social Shaping of Technology to the Staging of Temporary Spaces of Innovation – A Case of Participatory Innovation (Clausen and Gunn 2015).
It is the collection, transformation and translation of cross-disciplinary insights into knowledge objects, actions and prototypes that participatory innovation strives for (ibid., Pedersen 2020, Clausen et al 2020). This means that we (innovators) only provide a temporary stage for the networks we involve throughout the process, and that it is our responsibility and role to collect and negotiate the concerns, desires, and future images of the broader collective, which inhabits the worlds we innovate for (Pedersen 2020).
To build more inclusive and sustainable representations of desired future worlds, thus, innovators must move beyond their personal networks and assumptions, involve the corresponding experts and actors and facilitate knowledge exchange and the translation into characteristics for target worlds in the making. The former shown funnel of inclusion, now depicts a small selection of possible actors that could be involved in such processes.
Figure 8. Inclusion in innovation
To summarize, I believe there is a need for a richer, more realistic and more grounded representation of the investigated world today and the desired future worlds as the very basis for good innovation. Instead of starting with the problem, the technology or the human, I think we should much rather start with the worlds we want to live in, the kind of rules and values that should guide activities and technologies in these desired worlds, and then invent products and services as a means to contribute to building such worlds.
TARGET WORLDS AS A NEW STARTING POINT
As a reaction to the aforementioned problems, I propose a new innovation framework called Target Worlds – as a humble attempt to deal with formerly described problems in innovation. Target Worlds, as a framework, recognizes the importance of balancing problem focus with the imagination of better worlds (the imagination in Target) based on contextual circumstances (the multiplicity in Worlds) and holistic sustainability (the holism in World). It urges the innovator to choose a different starting point. Instead of centering around the emerging technology, the human or the user, Target Worlds asks the innovator to go beyond and involve greater good futures as a set of rules for the future worlds in the making and, hence, also for the innovation process to come. It grounds innovation work in present human-technology interactions while investigating the images of desired futures in an inclusive and participatory manner.
While contributing to more holistic sustainable innovation, I am also convinced that Target Worlds will help companies develop competitive advantages. By understanding the worlds for which companies build products & services, they understand how those might integrate into socio-technical networks in the future. This will enable companies to create lock-in effects for their products & services, which in turn might secure the company’s market position in the long-run. By understanding the connections and interdependencies for the bigger picture, partnerships and network effects will be easier to achieve.
Worldbuilding
One of the disciplines that has mastered the inclusion of experts in the process of creating futures is worldbuilding. It is the approach that any good fiction or science-fiction author and filmmaker uses to set the parameters within which the plot can evolve. Think about the Star Wars underwater world, Otoh Gunga (Jar Jar Binks’ home world). As George Lucas pointed out, when building such a world, you have to think things through:
The whole culture has to be designed. What do they believe in? How do they operate? What are the economics of the culture? (…) you have to have thought it through, otherwise, there’s – something always rings very untrue or phony about what it is that’s going on.
(George Lucas about Otoh Gunga, in an interview with Bill Moyers 1999)
Figure 9. The underwater world ‘Otoh Gunga’ (Source: starwars.com)
Figure 10. Otoh Gunga concept art by Doug Chiang (Source: reddit.com)
Building future worlds has to be a collaborative and interdisciplinary exercise in which “you want to conceive of how things work as a system as opposed to a linear way” (Karlin 2014). When done right, worldbuilding “asks questions that speak honestly to the issues facing our own world, trains us to ask what-if’s well, allows us to picture outwards, and sparks us into action.” (Hollon 2018). This is when “worldbuilding transcends from imaginative entertainment to applied imagination” (ibid.) and that is why worldbuilding has become a truly powerful tool for innovation. Big corporations like Intel, Nike or Boeing, and more have attended science fiction conferences to participate in worldbuilding workshops due to the very fact that it “encourages non-linear thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration” and system-thinking (Karlin 2014). Several real-life innovations have sprung from imagined future worlds, such as Minority Report, which resulted in about 100 patents (McDowell 2021) or Star Trek or the envisioned space colonization scenarios by NASA, which resulted in several everyday life products.
Figure 11. Star Trek (Source: startrek.com)
Figure 12. Minority Report (Source: arstechnica.com)
Worldbuilding has expanded its influence over the years and moved from media (books, movies, etc.) to education (games, labs, etc.) and finally arrived at innovation to help imagine and experience future worlds. In the following, I hope to point out how anthropology can contribute to this process.
BUILDING TARGET WORLDS
The following sections will outline the process of building target worlds in four steps:
- Understand your reference world
- Explore desired futures & enchant your target world
- Build your target world
- Build for your target world
Scoping Target Worlds
Building target worlds is not about passively experiencing what’s coming, or trying to anticipate what might be, but about taking up an active role in defining a desirable future world version. The obvious elephant in the room is “desirable for who?” With that it becomes entirely clear that building target worlds is not about building the future world for the entire planet, or even for your entire country.
Target Worlds is about more local worlds, which might be as large as a part of the city, an entire district, a village, a co-living building or just a coffee place. A target world always entails several dimensions (e.g. internal, embodied, external and your digital world – see Haines 2017) and can be multisited (so different physical and virtual spaces – see Marcus 1995). Most certainly it will share brother and sister worlds with very similar traits, which your target world might also work for. Key is that you start with some sort of limited scope, which you can later continuously build onto, compare with similar worlds, and eventually expand.
Figure 13: Multidimensionality and multisitedness of worlds
As the visualization above shows, worlds can be anywhere, on mars, in the rocket to get there, on earth, in a building, on a drone landing spot on the roof, in a family home, on the streets, in your phone on Instagram, in a computer game, in virtual reality or between multiple devices like your notebook, phone and smartwatch. It is really up to you where you draw the line to start with. Most certainly you will realize throughout the process that your scope has to be expanded on. Contrary to limiting scope, Target Worlds is all about identifying the right scope over time. Start small with understanding your local world first and expand later.