Andrea Vitali - A Social Innovation research and development

A Social Innovation Research and Development
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LEONARDO for Human & Environment Rights

Andrea Vitali
Ver 1.0 - Draft for discussion

14 /5 / 2012

LEONARDO for Human & Environment Rights Andrea Vitali

Table of Content

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 6
The Challenge ................................................................................................................................................... 7
Part 1 - Basic Research ................................................................................................................................... 10
What is Innovation ? ...................................................................................................................................... 11
Imitation ..................................................................................................................................................... 12
Invention .................................................................................................................................................... 13
Innovation .................................................................................................................................................. 15
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 18
What we learned ? ......................................................................................................................................... 19
The XX Century ........................................................................................................................................... 19
Research and Development - How the “D” got into R&D ........................................................................... 20
Research and Development - World’s top 10 leaders statistics ................................................................. 22
Research and Development - Regional average statistics .......................................................................... 24
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 25
Guilds ......................................................................................................................................................... 25
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 26
The Italian Renaissance .............................................................................................................................. 27
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 29
Leonardo da Vinci ....................................................................................................................................... 30
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 31
The Social Economy - a common point of view .............................................................................................. 33
The Social Enterprise Compass ................................................................................................................... 34
The Social Economy - a new point of view ..................................................................................................... 36
Background ................................................................................................................................................ 36
The architecture of the social economy ..................................................................................................... 41
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 44
Part 2 – Applied Research .............................................................................................................................. 45

Ver 1.0 - DRAFT for discussion 2


The Social Economy - the institutional conditions for Innovation .................................................................. 46
The Public Economy ....................................................................................................................................... 46
Public Finance: methods to generate internal innovation .......................................................................... 47
Public labor: redesigning the labor contract............................................................................................... 49
Organizational forms .................................................................................................................................. 49
Metrics and assessment ............................................................................................................................. 50
The circuit of information ........................................................................................................................... 51
The Grant Economy ........................................................................................................................................ 51
Generation of Innovative projects .............................................................................................................. 52
Finance ....................................................................................................................................................... 52
Packages of Support ................................................................................................................................... 54
Platforms, tools and protocols for innovation ............................................................................................ 54
Governance and accountability .................................................................................................................. 54
Regulatory, fiscal, legal and other conditions for extending the social economy ....................................... 54
The Market Economy ..................................................................................................................................... 55
Generation and value creation ................................................................................................................... 55
Finance ....................................................................................................................................................... 55
Organizations and ownership ..................................................................................................................... 56
Information ................................................................................................................................................ 56
Regulatory, fiscal, legal and other conditions for generating innovation in the social economy................ 57
The Household Economy ................................................................................................................................ 57
Public spaces for social innovation ............................................................................................................. 57
Valorizing household time .......................................................................................................................... 58
The New Mutualism ................................................................................................................................... 58
Constructed households as sites of innovation .......................................................................................... 58
Social Movements ...................................................................................................................................... 59
The Social Economy - the process roots for Innovation ................................................................................. 59
John Dewey ................................................................................................................................................ 59
Roberto Mangabeira Unger ........................................................................................................................ 61
The Social Economy - the process for Innovation ........................................................................................... 63
Prompts, inspirations and diagnoses .......................................................................................................... 63
Proposals and ideas .................................................................................................................................... 65



Prototyping and pilots ................................................................................................................................ 67
Sustaining ................................................................................................................................................... 68
Scaling and diffusion................................................................................................................................... 71
Systemic change ......................................................................................................................................... 74
The Grant Economy – an economic evaluation .............................................................................................. 78
The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project ......................................................................... 78
The Global Civil Society - Statistics ............................................................................................................. 79
From Social Economy to Social Innovation ..................................................................................................... 87
What is social innovation? .......................................................................................................................... 87
Why social innovation? .............................................................................................................................. 87
Process dimension...................................................................................................................................... 89
Risks associated with the concept, and what social innovation is not ........................................................ 90
A working definition ................................................................................................................................... 91
Barriers to social innovations ..................................................................................................................... 92
Barriers from the perspective of the ‘social demand’ approach ................................................................ 93
Barriers from the perspective of the ‘societal challenges’ approach ......................................................... 96
Barriers from the perspective of the ‘systemic change’ approach ............................................................. 98
Social enterprise ......................................................................................................................................... 99
Conclusion 2° part – Applied Research ......................................................................................................... 100
Social innovation ...................................................................................................................................... 101
Social economy......................................................................................................................................... 103
Policy for science ...................................................................................................................................... 106
Social value ............................................................................................................................................... 106
The linear model of innovation ................................................................................................................ 106
Part 3 – Development .................................................................................................................................. 108
A new model of Social Innovation ................................................................................................................ 109
Enhancement of previous Social Innovation model ................................................................................. 109
Social value ............................................................................................................................................... 109
Policy for science ...................................................................................................................................... 110
Human Rights ........................................................................................................................................... 110
Environment Rights .................................................................................................................................. 111
The Research and Development social taxonomies ................................................................................. 113



The Research role ..................................................................................................................................... 114
The process for the new model of Social Innovation................................................................................ 117
The social innovation economy ................................................................................................................ 119
LEONARDO for Human and Environment Rights .......................................................................................... 122
The Learning Environments ...................................................................................................................... 124
Orienting New Approaches ...................................................................................................................... 127
Research and Development Objectives .................................................................................................... 128
High Education ......................................................................................................................................... 134
The target – the demand side .................................................................................................................. 135
The knowledge and skills champion – the supply side ............................................................................. 135
Conclusion - the Challenge ........................................................................................................................... 136
References ................................................................................................................................................... 137
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... 140
Creative Commons Public License ................................................................................................................ 140



“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”
(I am a man: and I deem nothing pertaining to man is foreign to me)
Terence, 195/185–159 BC

“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one”
John Lennon, Imagine - 1971

“Willingness to take risk and see value in absurdity”
S. Sundaram, GSI EDU-Research

Abstract

Object of this research is to provide the reader with a new model of Social Innovation based on:

 the genealogical history of Innovation and his linear model of Innovation
 the current research and definitions for Social Economy
 a new Social Value framework driving the Social Innovation model proposed

Scope of this research is twofold:

1. A research centered on innovation: the 1° part of the document starts with a challenge issued by
Godin B. at UNESCO on the effective role of innovation for development countries, the document
present a genealogical history of the category innovation to understand which are the origin of this
term, its relation with imitation and invention, and how has been influenced by industrial evolution
and economy in its accepted linear model of innovation. The consequence of this analysis is that
nowadays innovation is commonly referred to technological innovation. The document continues
with an analysis on how research and development has changed in the last century and the role of
development in shifting from “policy for science” in “science for policy”, becoming R&D a standard
de facto all round the world: some supporting statistics are included. Afterwards, some historical
references about Guilds, Italian Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci are introduced to focus how



humanistic values have influenced the arrival of new form of knowledge and organization. The 1°
part concludes with an introduction framework about Social Economy. The 2° part of the document
begins with Innovation conditions for Social Economy: institutional requirements for the
constituting four sub-economies and the stages of Social Economy process: some supporting
statistics about economic evaluation of Grant Economy are presented. The 2° part concludes with
an analysis focused on Social innovation: definition, drivers and barriers to Social Innovations are
presented. The 3° and final part of the document concerns with a new model of Social Innovation: a
project research, whose aim is the development of the new model, is suggested.

2. A project research centered on a new model of Social Innovation: the 3° and final part of the
document concerns with a new model of Social Innovation, and the differences with the current
model, the reference values and the design structure are presented. Finally a project research,
whose aim is the development of the new model, is suggested.

The Challenge

This is the challenged issued by Godin’s communication at UNESCO on March 2011 1.

For fifty years, countries have measured their inventive and innovative efforts using precise methodological
rules. The OECD has developed influential manuals to this end. However, the manuals’ recommendations
are concerned mainly, if not entirely, with the supply side of invention and innovation. … Diffusion is
measured from the perspective of the innovating firm (process innovation), with no statistics from users
other than firms, whether they be customers, organizations, or whole countries. … Today, “user innovation”
has become a catchword. …

The majority of UNESCO countries are, first of all, and for the better and the worst, consumers of knowledge
and technology produced elsewhere. There is therefore a need to emphasize these countries’ efforts to
absorb what comes from outside as much as their own inventive and innovative efforts. This means that the
statistical tables should give equal attention to invention and imitation, which is not the case currently. To
this end, one must shift his attention from an exclusive focus on firms.

The OECD recently published a document intended to contribute to integrating innovation into the policy
agendas of developing countries. Innovation and the Development Agenda, published in 2010, is part of the
OECD Innovation Strategy of that same year. This document is most welcome. The explicit aim is to
introduce in innovation policies a “different lens” from that of industrialized countries. This short note

1
B. Godin (2011), A User-View of Innovation: Some Critical Thoughts on the Current STI Frameworks and Their
Relevance to Developing Countries, Communication presented at Expert Meeting on Innovation Statistics, UNESCO, 8-
10 March, 2011.



identifies four assumptions and biases on which Innovation and the Development Agenda rests. The
objective is to suggest the continuance of, and deeper thoughts on, what is certainly a beginning toward a
broader understanding of innovation.

1. Innovation is the (not-so) new (miracle) solution to development issues. To the OECD, “the last half-
century has seen different approaches to development which have achieved varying degrees of
success”. In their place, innovation should now be considered a strategy for development: “most
current social, economic and environmental challenges require creative solutions based on
innovation and technological advance”. But is it really the case and how precisely? The document,
as with most of the literature on innovation, starts with innovation as a panacea, not with problems
of development (except in general terms) or the extent (and limitations) to which innovation is or is
not a (THE) solution.
2. The document promotes, again as most of the literature on innovation does, a supply-side view of
innovation: firms, the commercialization of invention and the use of invention in industrial
production. I agree that this must be part of every innovation strategy. But a supply-side view needs
to be complemented by a user-side one. To a certain extent, a “different lens” is offered in the OECD
document: a certain emphasis is placed on the informal sector and non-technological innovation
and on the need to adapt the National Innovation System (NIS) framework to developing countries
such as: considering product innovation as much as process innovation (but the issue here is still
discussed in terms of the old, namely competitiveness), innovation in low-tech sectors, incremental
innovation, and adaptive capacities and learning. However, the framework remains a supply-side
view. Nothing in the document goes beyond innovation as commercialization.
3. A demand or user-side view, namely a consideration of the user or adopter of (already existing)
innovations, is poorly developed. Certainly, the document admits that, “If governments are to
support innovation activity, there is a case for policies that encourage the conversion of knowledge,
however that knowledge is gained”; “the demand-side of technology and innovation needs to be
stressed in addition to the conventional focus on the supply side”. Nevertheless, the document has
very little to say except general thoughts about absorptive capacities, mentions that developing
technologies need to be adapted to local needs. The document discusses the issues in terms of the
old: technology-flow– there is nothing on flows of scientific knowledge and how developing
countries get and use scientific knowledge from foreign sources. All in all, a user-side view still needs
to be articulated. It is one thing that a firm extracts value from innovation, but another if the end
user is not better for it – that it does not share in that added value.
4. There is little concern for “people” as innovators (doing things differently) except, again, as
introducers of new inventions to the market or as buyers of new inventions. Certainly, the
consideration of people as innovators in the larger sense gets some hearing in Innovation and the
Development Agenda, like the discussion of the informal sector. However, the issue is entirely
discussed in terms of the market. As if every solution to health, poverty and education need a firm, a
technology, a market. How do people change their behavior in response to new knowledge (like
AIDS)? How organizations (schools, hospitals) contribute to people adopting new behaviors? What
about microcredit, certainly one of the most innovative ideas of the last decades in the developing
country. Is it included in the statistics, as the current survey is constructed?



Why such a vision? Simply because the authors continue to use the dominant frameworks – and the OECD
itself urges implanting of its own methodology in developing countries, like reviews of innovation policies. …
In the last five decades, all frameworks used at the OECD have been supply-side including NIS.… NIS is
entirely centered on innovation in firms: the system gravitates around firms and the way other
organizations and institutions contribute to innovation in firms. The manual is entirely concerned with
surveying innovation in firms. Innovation is defined as “implementation”, namely introducing invention on
the market or bringing a new invention into industrial use. With regard to diffusion (“the spread of
innovation”) and transfer (“linkages and flows”), the manual deals only with how the firm acquires
knowledge and technology from outside. Residual attention is given to end-users, including individuals (in
their jobs), customers and organizations other than firms. There is nothing on end users, the capacity users
have to use invention, how a (potential) user like a developed country comes to know (foreign) knowledge
and technology, what mechanisms it has to this end, what supporting infrastructures, etc.

What would a survey of innovation look like if one starts with a user-based view? It would:

 Address and focus on specific and precise problems or areas of development – like one does in the
case of specific surveys, like ICT, biotechnology – not innovation in general and broad terms
(“percentage of enterprise that introduced innovation”).
 Survey end-users, not just producers.
 Cover individuals, groups, organizations and government.
 Measure diverse kinds of innovation: ideas, behaviors and things (and compared the new to the
old). Where does the innovation come from?
 What use, if any, is made of the innovation? By whom?
 Identify the mechanisms through which innovation diffuse and their presence or absence in a
developing country: Do and how knowledge about X gets into country Y? What lags? Why?
 What effects (quality of life), including the bad ones? To what extent is the innovation adapted to a
country’s needs?
 Evaluate the role of government as innovator in matter of policies (not only as “hampering factor”):
what infrastructures, policies and programs exist in country Y for supporting innovation? Moreover,
in order to increase its relevance, a survey of innovation (be it supply-based or user-based) should
look for facts rather than rely on questions with answers of a subjective nature.

A Radical Proposal

 Forget OECD’s frameworks and statistics and start anew
 Back to basic concepts: invention, diffusion and use

Very interesting Challenge, why don’t accept it ? How can we proceed and try to solve it ?



Part 1 - Basic Research



What is Innovation ?

Godin’s challenge requires a New Innovation Framework based on forgetting OECD’s frameworks2 (and it’s
statistics / measures) and to go back to basic concepts. But if we have to forget something we need, first of
all, to understand what we have to forget and it’s basic concept.

Therefore, it is necessary to point out:

 what Innovation means
 how Innovation meaning have been influenced by the OECD firm vision

To reach out these objectives some of Godin’s concepts 3 are presented.

Innovation is everywhere … (and) is also a central idea in the popular imaginary, in the media, in public
policy and is part of everybody’s vocabulary. … To many, innovation is a relatively recent phenomenon and
its study more recent yet: innovation has acquired real importance in the twentieth century. In point of fact,
however, innovation has always existed. … Many people spontaneously understand innovation to be
technological innovation. The literature itself takes this for granted. More often than not, studies on
technological innovation simply use the term innovation, although they are really concerned with
technological innovation. However, etymologically and historically, the concept of innovation is much
broader. … (Moreover) innovation generally understood, in many milieus, as commercialized innovation …
but other types of innovation are either rapidly forgotten or rarely discussed. By contrast, every individual is
to a certain extent innovative; artists are innovative, scientists are innovative, and so are organizations in
their day-to-day operations. …

A genealogical history of the category “innovation” … concentrates on the “creative” dimension of
innovation … (and) identifies the concepts that have defined innovation through history, and that have led
to innovation as a central category of modern society.

Innovation … does not exist as such, it is constructed through the eyes and through discourses. The
genealogical study … (is analyzed) by three hypothesis:

 Innovation is about novelty (arising from human creativity), as etymology, dictionaries and history
suggest. As such, innovation is of any kind, not only material or technological. In this sense,
innovation as category has a very long history. …
 History of innovation as “creativity” is that of three concepts and their derivatives … (seen as)
sequential steps in the process leading to innovation:

Imitation → Invention → Innovation

2
As Godin point out in his communication “This is no judgment on OECD works, but its relevance to development”
3
Godin, B. (2008), Innovation: The History of a Category, Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation, INRS:
Montreal, Forthcoming



 Innovation as a break with the past… in the sense that it suggests that invention per se is not
enough. There has to be use and adoption of the invention, namely innovation, in order for benefits
to accrue.

Imitation

Imitation is a concept of Greek origin … (and) Plato’s philosophy is entirely concerned with imitation and its
many senses and opposites: appearances (or images) – versus reality; falsity – versus truth. To Plato, even
physical objects are imitations, compared to God and true nature. But it is through Aristotle that the
concept of imitation got its main influence. To Aristotle, (practical) arts imitate nature (mimesis). Such an
understanding of art gave rise to imitatio as the central problem of art, with pejorative overtones, then to
imitation as inspiration. … The mimetic orientation was the most primitive aesthetic theory, art imitates the
world of appearance. The “artist” extracts the form of the natural world and imposes it upon an artificial
medium. … However, according to most theories, imitation is only instrumental toward producing effects, …
a literary mechanism for the production of difference.

Until the mid-eighteenth century, imitation was presented as a positive practice, not one that was
distrusted or pejorative (… a method for teaching, … selective borrowing and creative copying, … enriches
the tradition focusing on interpretation, … a way to come closer to real knowledge of nature by imitating
nature, … as a substitute for imported commodities): … briefly stated, imitation is taken for granted and is a
common practice. …

Imitation has often been portrayed as being invention itself. The view in the Middle Ages of the work of
artisans is that of art learned by imitating nature, but in so doing, the artisan changes nature, as claimed by
the alchemists. Equally, in Renaissance literary theory and visual arts, one finds recurrent descriptions of
imitation as rediscovery of the old, as something “new” to copy, as something never seen before. … An
argument frequently evoked is that imitation requires work, experimentation, judgment and imagination.
All these descriptions in literature, arts and crafts generally refer to an idea that has been very influential
among many authors in defining invention, and subsequently innovation: that of combination. Imitation is
invention because, when combining elements from nature, it combines the best of them, and by so doing
improves nature. Combination “creates a whole that is more perfect than nature”. Equally, in combining
previous schools of thought, the combination surpasses the work of past authors. Compilatio, a “wide
literary activity which encompassed various genres in the Middle Ages” and after, is combination of others’
material into a new work, a unio. … In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, patents and their precursors
in the fifteenth century like letters and privileges, were not granted to inventors, as they are today, but to
importers of existing inventions … Now, if we turn to the twentieth century, we clearly observe that
imitation gave rise to, and was often used as a term for, diffusion. … Contemporary theories on innovation
now include diffusion (or use) as a step in the innovation process. In summary, imitation has rarely been
separated from invention. To many, imitation has close links to invention, and even constitutes invention
itself. However, with time imitation came to be contrasted to invention. Starting from the mid-eighteenth
century, imitation was regarded as mere copying, while originality became the criterion for real invention.



Invention

Invention is a term that comes from rhetoric. In classical rhetoric, invention was the first of five divisions of
the rhetorical art. Invention is composed of guidelines to help speakers find and elaborate language. In De
Inventione, Cicero (106-43 BC) defined invention as the “discovery of valid or seemingly valid arguments to
render one’s cause probable”. However, in the history of rhetoric, invention as so conceived has been
eclipsed by one or more of the four other divisions (arrangement, style, memory and delivery).

Invention as a term in other domains really came to be used in the mid-fourteenth century as finding or
discovery, namely with regard to knowledge, or science (knowing). It came to be applied to making as well,
in poetry then in visual arts. From the sixteenth century, invention was used more and more to apply to
newly-created things (artifacts). … From late medieval Europe, the idea of invention spread everywhere, to
different degrees and under different terms. … In the Renaissance, there was “no unanimity in usage of
divino, ingegno, fantasia, immaginazione and invenzione”, … (and) the idea of progress is a major one
during the Renaissance. … In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the idea of novelty is everywhere and
becomes very much a (positive) cultural value: nowhere is the idea of novelty more presents than in science,
… frequently discussed as an active search or hunt (venatio), a very old metaphor. … One thing is clear: in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the idea of novelty is everywhere and becomes very much a
(positive) cultural value:

 Philosophy: praxis4
 Literary theory and visual arts: imagination, originality, creation
 Arts and crafts (engineering): ingenium, invention
 (Natural Philosophy and) science: discovery, experiment, scientific change
 History: change, revolution, progress
 “Evolutionists”5: growth, development, evolution, variation, mutation
 Anthropology: culture (or cultural) change
 Sociology: action, social change
 Psychology: attitude change; creativity
 Management and politics: organizational change
 Economics: entrepreneurship, technological change, innovation

Change became a preoccupation of study in many emerging scientific disciplines, from sociology and history
to natural philosophy, or the sciences: … from the eighteenth century are the “men of science” who have
taken change most seriously. …

Whatever its name, the new is not without its opponents: the Querelle between the ancients and the
moderns, in literature and philosophy but also in science and education, is that between imitating (and
surpassing) the ancients versus a totally new enterprise, … perhaps the first systematic debate in history

4
In philosophy, praxis has not really been theorized because of the emphasis on mind. It slowly begins to be become
an issue, quite imperfectly according to many, with expressiveness, utilitarianism (free will), existentialism (life, will,
consciousness), pragmatism (experience, inquiry), and the philosophy of action
5
Evolutionists: early geology, early paleontology, natural history, and biology



about the new as opposed to tradition. … The defenders of invention often have an ideological aim: to
distinguish oneself (identity) and to justify one’s activities (image of scientists, inventors and writers), for
purposes of patronage, among other things. Hence, the construction of oppositions portraying tradition and
the like as static (transmission from generation to generation: irrational and arbitrary) versus invention and
the like as cumulative and progressive. Over time, invention in science came to share the vocabulary of
writers with the term discovery: … for some time, invention meant finding as well as making, and was
applied without qualification to both activities. … Later, a distinction was made between the two concepts:
discovery referred to facts or things that already exist out there and that one finds out, while invention
combines and makes new things, including scientific theories. … Literature and visual arts are other fields
where the idea of novelty is widespread. Contrary to science, with its emphasis on facts and method and its
negative assessment of imagination, the “power of imagination” is rehabilitated. In fact, literary theory and
visual arts (painting, sculpture) in the Renaissance adapted invention from the literature on rhetoric to a
psychological process of imagination. …, (and) originality came to define the artist and the metaphor of
creation (already present in Greek mythology). … Certainly, originality, as with imitation and invention,
plays his important role: … originality means origin, or source (authorship), … and a distinctive quality of
work, or novelty, as well. … As such, originality came to characterize the genius, an important figure in the
Renaissance, … and a concept with a long history: first defined as spirit (which gave inspiration), it came to
mean innate talent or ability (ingenium), then a person with superior creative powers. … (So), the term
invention was applied to ingenious things like “machines, artifices, devices, engines, methods”.

Ingenuity was also a key concept for the artisan from the Middle Ages onward: … the artisan, first of all
alchemists, through their art created new things in their opinion, and for the first time made art a creative
force rather than only an imitative entity. Equally, in Renaissance painters, ceramists and sculptors really
thought they were creating new things, not only practicing an imitative art. This creative power over nature
gave rise to the figure of the inventor, a genius or hero who, as to scientists and artists, was not without
opponents. As a matter of fact, it took time for inventors to be admitted to the pantheon of great men. Up
to the beginning of the nineteenth century, and again after the commercialization of technological
inventions on a large scale at the end of this same century, the inventor was anonymous.

The alignment of the term invention with technological invention was helped by the conventionalization, or
institutionalization, of technological invention through privileges and patent laws from the late fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries onward. … As patents attest, the qualities previously attributed to the genius or
artist (like originality) become those attributed to the commodity. Over time, technological invention
obtained a relative “monopoly” in the vocabulary of invention because of the culture of things, or material
culture, and patents are witness to this phenomenon. Over time, the culture of things has developed and
owes its existence to many factors. One such factor is the “consumer revolution”, … a second factor is what
came to be called the “industrial revolution” and the use of technologies in industrial processes, … (a third
factor), or innovation, occurred at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth
century: (large) firms began setting up research laboratories as a way to accelerate industrial development.
As A.N. Whitehead put it long ago, “the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of
the method of invention”, (in fact) men have invented a method for (systematic and cumulative) invention.
… Along with the patent system discussed above, the development of industries based on the research
laboratory and the commercialization of technological inventions on a large scale were major factors



contributing to a conception of invention as technological invention. Briefly stated, technological inventions
got increased attention because they have utilitarian value as opposed or contrasted to Ancient knowledge,
as it was often said from Bacon onward … Things, and utility, have a place in science too: … for F. Bacon, the
main exponent for more useful knowledge in science, namely for the mechanical arts and artificial objects,
“the real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of the human life with new inventions and
riches”.

Innovation

Novation is a term that first appeared in law in the thirteenth century. It meant renewing an obligation by
changing a contract for a new debtor. … Until the eighteenth century, a “novator” was still a suspicious
person, one to be mistrusted, … and the term was rarely used in the various arts and sciences before the
twentieth century. … Until innovation took on a central place in theories on social and economic change,
imitation and invention (under different terms, as discussed above) were seen as opposites, as was the case
in social practices. … While previous theories of invention were of a “psychological” kind and focused on
inspiration, imagination and genius, the end of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of new theories
for explaining novelty, and these were of a social kind. The first such theories arose in anthropology.
anthropology made very few uses of the term innovation. Innovation was nevertheless what
anthropologists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century studied as culture change: changes in
culture traits, but also inventions in agriculture, trade, social and political organizations (law, customs,
religion, family) and technology. …

Many anthropologists framed the discussion in terms of invention versus diffusion (as imitation) to explain
stages of civilization. This gave rise to what came to be called the diffusion controversy. On one side were
evolutionists, to whom invention stems from multiple centers and occurs independently in different cultures:
parallel inventions, as they were called, reflect the psychic unity of human nature, and differences in culture
reflect steps of the same process, or varying speeds of evolution. … At the opposite end were diffusionists, to
whom man is essentially uninventive: culture emerges from one center, then diffuses through borrowings,
migrations and invasions. … Until about the mid-twentieth century, evolutionism was the framework
anthropologists used to study culture change. Then acculturation, as the study of cultural change resulting
from contacts between different cultures, developed. Anthropologists stopped looking at diffusion as mere
imitation contrasted to invention: diffusion is inventive adaptation. Barnett (an anthropologist) developed a
comprehensive theory of innovation, defined as “any thought, behavior, or thing that is new because it is
qualitatively different from existing forms”, … and everyone is an innovator. … We have to turn to
sociologists, and then economists, to find the systematic development of studies on innovation. What place
doe the term and category of innovation take in sociological theories? In studying the literature, one
observes a move from multiple terms used interchangeably to innovation: the most frequent terms are the
combined one invention/discovery and technology. …

The first theory of innovation comes from the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (who) was interested in
explaining social change (or social evolution): grammar, language, religion, law, constitution, economic



regime, industry and arts. … The success of an invention (i.e.: imitation) depends on other inventions (or
opposition between inventions) and social factors. To Tarde, invention is the combination of previous or
elementary inventions …. Invention comes from individuals (not necessarily great men), and is socially
influenced. … Invention is the driving force of society, but society is mainly imitative. … However, to many
critics over time sociologists have been concerned with imitation (as socialization) rather than with creative
action: the study of individual creativity was left to psychology. … Ogburn and Gilfillan started looking at
inventions, above all technological inventions, as causes of cultural change or social change (social
organizations and behaviours). To Ogburn, “the use of material things is a very important part of the culture
of any people”. What he observed was the growth and acceleration of material culture. … Ogburn
developed the concept of the cultural lag to account for this process. There is an increasing lag between the
material culture (technology) and the rest of culture (adaptive culture) due to inertia and lack of social
adaptation. …

To the sociologists, technological invention is … a social process rather than an individual one. Certainly
“without the inventor there can be no inventions”, but “the inventors are not the only individuals
responsible for invention”: social forces like demographic (race) and geographic factors, and “cultural
heritage” play a part. Secondly, technological invention is social because it is cumulative (or evolutionary),
namely the result of accumulation and accretion of minor details, modifications, perfectings, and minute
additions over centuries, rather than a one-step creation. Finally, technological invention is social in a third
sense: it is more and more systematic, it comes from organized research laboratories specifically dedicated
to this end. … This meaning of innovation as technological invention used and adopted is the common
sociological understanding of innovation, although a fourth meaning would soon be used as well, following
the economists’ definition: technological invention as commercialized by industry. … Despite this
understanding, explicit definitions of innovation are rare among sociologists. The early few definitions that
exist differ considerably. Certainly, they all refer to the idea of novelty, but they differ in the sense that some
include the act itself (combination), others the impacts of innovation, still others the subjective perception of
it. … Innovation as process is also how economists understand the category. However economists add their
own stamp to the idea: innovation is the commercialization of (technological) invention. And unlike the
definitions of sociologists, this definition came with time to be accepted among economists, and by others,
including the sociologist.

 Tarde (1820): Invention, imitation, op position
 Ogburn (1920): Invention(and diffusion), maladjustment (lag)/ adjustment
 Bernard (1923): Forumula, blue print, machine
 Chapin (1928): Invention, accumulation, selection, diffusion
 Ogburn and Gilfillan (1933): Idea, trial device (model or pl), demonstration, regular use, adoption
 Gilfillan (1935): Idea, sketch, drawing; model, full-size experimental invention, commercial practice
 Gilfillan (1937): Thought, model (patent), first practical use, commercial success, important use
 US National Resources Committee (1937): Beginnings, development, diffusion, social influences
 Ogburn and Nimkoff (1940): Idea, development, model, invention, improvement, marketing
 Ogburn (1941): Idea, plan, tangible form, improvement, production, promotion, marketing, sales
 Ogburn (1950): Invention, accumulation, diffusion, adjustment
 Rogers (1962): Innovation, diffusion, adoption



 Rogers (1983): Needs/problems, research, development, commercialization, diffusion and adoption,
consequences

The study of change is not the traditional concern of economics. Historically, economics is concerned with
equilibrium rather than dynamics. Although the concepts of work (labor), production and growth held
central place in early economic theories, the study of economic change is not a fundamental concept in
economics, as culture change is in anthropology or as social change is in sociology: change really got into
economics with the study of technology as a cause of economic growth, … called technological change, as
the use of technological inventions in industrial processes. …

Increased interest in technological change can be traced back to the years following the Great Depression,
where the bicentenarial debate on the role of mechanization on employment reemerged, … (and) the study
of technology developed via the measurement of productivity: increases in productivity as an indicator of
technology usage. … Subsequently, the formalization of the measurement developed through what was
called the production function, … an equation … that links quantity produced of a good (output) to
quantities of inputs. … Economists interpreted movements in the curve of the production function as
technological change (the substitution of capital for labor). … Then economists started correlating R&D with
productivity measures: beginning in the late 1950s, a whole literature developed, analyzing the contribution
of research to industrial development, and to performance, productivity and economic growth, first from
mainstream economists.

It is through evolutionary economics, among them J.A. Schumpeter, that innovation really got into
economics. To Schumpeter, capitalism is creative destruction: disturbance of existing structures, and
unceasing novelty and change. In his view, innovations are responsible for this phenomenon. Schumpeter
identified five types of innovation: 1) introduction of a new good; 2) introduction of a new method of
production; 3) opening of a new market; 4) conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-
manufactured goods; and 5) implementation of a new form of organization. Part of the explanation for the
use of the term innovation in the economic literature has to do with a reaction against historians and
against the term invention. Following others, Schumpeter distinguished innovation from invention. To
Schumpeter, “innovation is possible without anything we should identify as invention and invention does not
necessarily induce innovation”. Invention is an act of intellectual creativity and “is without importance to
economic analysis”, while innovation is an economic decision: a firm applying an invention or adopting an
invention. However, it took time for the category to gain acceptance. In the early 1960s, the category was
still not widely accepted. … In the 1970s, the skepticism continued: the “use of the term innovation is
counterproductive”, … because each individual has his or her interpretation. … Schumpeter is usually
credited in the economic literature, particularly by evolutionary economists, as being the first theorist on
technological innovation: … Schumpeter did develop influential ideas on technological innovation as a
source of business cycles … (where) the entrepreneur (and, in a next stage, the large firm) is responsible for
technological innovation. But how? …

Over time, authors from business schools and economists developed theories or conceptual models of
technological innovation as a process from invention to diffusion, similar to those of the sociologists. In
these theories, technological innovation was defined as a step (the ultimate step) of a process starting with
invention – and defined as commercialized innovation. … The most popular and influential … theory



combining both production (of goods) and distribution … is what came to be called the “linear model of
innovation”: … technological innovation starts with basic research, then goes through applied research, then
development, and then production and diffusion. Such an understanding of technological innovation has
been very influential on science policy after 1945.

While innovation as technological innovation and as commercialized innovation came to dominate the
literature, other conceptions of innovation developed elsewhere. Inside the category of social innovation we
can include political innovation (innovation in public institutions such as schools and government agencies),
… organizational innovation (… study of innovative behaviors of research activities, … of organizations
developed such as organizational structure and management style).

What role did policy play in all this? A major one, indeed. Over the twentieth century, innovation was in fact
a policy-driven concept. Psychologists, sociologists, economists, including “evolutionary” economists, and
researchers from management, business schools and economics acted as consultants to governments, and
were concerned with offering policy recommendations for “social engineering”, productivity and economic
growth based on their theories, the more recent ones being conceptual frameworks like the knowledge-
based economy, the information economy, the information economy, the new economy, and national
innovation system. …. However, there has never been a “policy for science” period, as many authors argue,
only a “science for policy” one, during which public research and universities were urged to contribute to
technological innovation. Science policy has always been concerned with applying science to public goals.
From its very beginning, science policy, whether implicit or explicit, was constructed as a means to achieve
social, economic and political goals.

Conclusion

… Innovation as a (widely-used) category during the twentieth century is witness to a certain context or era
- capitalism - and to changes in political values. As J. Farr put it, “to understand conceptual change is in
large part to understand political changes”. Until early in the twentieth century, invention, ingenuity and
imagination were discussed as symbols of civilization and as attributes of geniuses, and their contribution to
the progress of the race. Then, the growing role of organizations in the twentieth century led to changes in
values. If there was to be increasing economic efficiency, there had to be innovation - through organizations
and the mobilization of their employees’ creative abilities. Such were the discourses of managers as well as
policy-makers. Theorists from many disciplines started studying innovation in terms of the effects of
technological innovation on the economy and society. To sociologists, gone was the lonely inventor as a
hero or genius. It was a myth created by past authors. Innovation is rather a social process. To economists,
gone was invention without market value. It is a subject for the historian. To the policy-maker, gone was (or
should be) research with no application. The golden age between the state and the funding of the basic
scientist, although short-lived, is finished. Innovation as a category in the twentieth century expresses
precisely these political changes: a demarcation with past understandings, values and practices. The
category’s previous meanings or predecessors (invention, ingenuity, imagination, etc.) came to be subsumed



under “innovation”, and the creative abilities of an individual placed in the service of organizations,
industrial development and economic growth.

Innovation is the last of a series of terms imagined to give meaning to modern practices. Certainly,
innovation is, to a certain extent, continuity with the past, in the sense that more often than not it refers to
technological invention. However, it is also a break with the past: invention per se is not enough. In fact,
many ideas and inventions fail, according to the history of technology. There has to be use of the invention,
namely innovation, in order for benefits to accrue. This is the first aspect of the break. Another concerns the
production of invention. While it was the individual, or genius, who was the source of invention in previous
representations, innovation places emphasis on the firm. And there is a third aspect of the break: benefits
deriving from invention concern economics, not culture or civilization.

There are now many people trying to broaden the understanding of innovation as technological innovation.
One now hears discourses on “social innovation”, meaning either major advances in the social sciences,
policy/institutional reforms for the betterment of society, or solutions to social needs and problems, coming
from the community sectors among others. Calls for do-it-yourself innovation, user-led innovation, open
innovation and “democratizing innovation” are in the same vein: technological innovation comes from many
sources, not only the research laboratory, but also users. … The OECD Oslo Manual itself, in its latest edition,
has broadened the definition of innovation to include organizational and marketing innovation, although
this is limited to firms. However, projects are now in progress for measuring innovation in the public sectors
in the near future.

The main goal of the promoters of these new ideas is ensuring that policy-makers takes account of non-
technological aspects of innovation in their policy. Whether the ideas will have an impact on the current
understanding of innovation remains to be seen. For the moment, they certainly contribute to extending the
discourses on, and the fascination with, innovation to more spheres of society, and mobilizing more people
in the name of innovation.

What we learned ?

How can we define a new paradigm for Social Innovation ? Thanks to Godin’s research presentation it is
possible to fix some starting points.

The XX Century

The last Century represented a turning point for invention and innovation concepts, seen as the
commercialization of invention and the use of invention in industrial production: this fact got to a new
capitalistic metric where technology and things culture lead science for policy and, as a consequence, for
human being. This revolution has radically influenced, and maybe substituted, the natural fulcrum of the



history of humanity: the human being. The humanity development, thanks to the central role of human
being, allowed during centuries flow an holistic vision of the word, where the different needs of human
being have been compared, from time to time, to individual or collective values “immanent” at the
belonging cultures: the apogee of human being centrality date back to Renaissance. The capitalism, and its
role in the transformation of innovation concept, took to a time continuum where the measure unit is
assumed “transcendent” to human being, the capital, which in turn standardize and trivialize human life to
a monetary value that follows a necessary and continuous growth in its material measure. The concept so
important for the economy for which “Invention is an act of intellectual creativity and is without importance
to economic analysis, while innovation is an economic decision” fully represents the paradoxical necessity
to take the capitalistic economy, “transcendent”, at being the only material asset that could measure and
substitute individual and collective values, which are “immanent”. The perversion of this model permeating
the XX Century is faithfully shown by recent facts where finance and world crisis that we are living and
subject to nowadays, as evolution and representation of a necessary and continuous growth, has become
itself “transcendent” with respect to capitalistic economic, which is in turn “transcendent” to human being.

To conclude we can say that this vision concerning with human being, capitalistic economy and at last
finance, for sure stressed but not so far from reality, remembers very well the poem by Goethe “The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice” where, for our case, the Sorcerer could be no other than the human being.

Research and Development - How the “D” got into R&D

One of the main issues raised by Godin is the role of Development as a firms’ domain.

R&D6 is a central component of official definitions of Science & Technology (S&T). Decades of work on
taxonomies and statistics on research are testimony to the construction behind the definition.

We can identify three stages in the construction of development as a category for statistical purposes:

1° Development was only a series or list of activities without a label, but identified for inclusion in
questionnaire responses.
2° Development came to be identified as such by way of creating a subcategory of research, alongside
basic and applied research. This was Huxley’s innovation, and Anthony was influential in its
measurement.
3° Development became a separate category, alongside research. It gave us the acronym we now
know and use: R&D.

The category had three main purposes:
1 Organizational. It corresponded to the type of research conducted in industry, to research divisions
in firms, and to entire organizations that defined themselves according to both research and
development.

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number 1, February 2006, pages 59–76, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, England



2 Analytical. Here, it was industrialists, consultants and academics in business schools who developed
models identifying development as a separate and decisive step in the innovation process.
3 Political. The category served political ends, among them the greater amount of money firms could
obtain from public funds by including development in research expenditure.

Despite its widespread use, the category was not without its methodological problems. Early on, these
problems were discussed at a meeting organized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1959, and at
the OECD meeting that launched the Frascati Manual in 1963. Most of the problems concerned the
demarcation between development and other activities, and the absence of precise accounting practices to
distinguish types of activity properly. This was an additional factor explaining the inclusion of development
in statistics on research.

Methodological difficulties also explain the exclusion of development from more recent statistics on S&T.
Development as an activity is in fact located somewhere between two other activities: research and
production. We have already alluded to the difficulty of separating applied research from development. This
became even more pronounced when the category was used for research other than industrial research. As
W H Shapley from the US Bureau of Budget commented at the NSF meeting in 1959:

“The practical problem results chiefly from the fact that a distinction between research and
development is not recognized in the way Government does its business … Projects and contracts
cover both research and development, and the distinction is usually not made even in the financial
records at the local operating level … because of the large number of projects”.

The other demarcation problem concerned development and production. Since, for example, minor
developments can also occur during this later stage, “the main difficulty arises in determining the point at
which development work ceases and production begins” (OECD). This is particularly important in the case of
military research, because R&D is not a separate entity, but part of general expense appropriations or
procurement contracts. This practice has enormous consequences on statistics: many different statistical
estimates frequently coexist for measuring the same phenomenon. As a National Research Council report
(known as the Frank Press report) argued in the mid-1990s:

“Nearly half of traditional federal research and development spending involves initial production,
maintenance, and upgrading of large-scale weapons and space systems … Those activities are
neither long-term investments in new knowledge nor investments in creating substantially new
applications. If they were excluded, the research and development investment budget — called the
federal S&T (FS&T) budget in this report — would be between $35 billion and $40 billion annually”.

As a consequence, and in line with the Frank Press report, the US Government started compiling a Federal
Science and Technology Budget in 1999, different from Federal Research and Development Spending. The
two now appear in the Budget. Federal Research and Development Spending, on one hand, is the
conventional way of counting R&D expenditure, and amounted to over US$117 billion in 2003. Here,
expenditure is broken down according to the standard three categories — basic research, applied research,
and development — to which ‘facilities and equipment’ is added. The Federal Science and Technology
Budget, on the other hand, is a collection of federal programs designed to be easy to track in the budget
process, rather than constituting a comprehensive inventory of federal S&T investments. The budget for
these programs amounted to nearly US$60 billion in 2003.



The main difference between this and the Federal Research and Development Spending budget is that it
excludes most development, such as Department of Defense weapons systems development, and includes
some scientific and technical education and training activities.

The Federal Science and Technology Budget presents a new concept in measuring S&T, and allows no
comparisons with other countries’ statistics. It differs from both the OECD definitions and the Press report
suggestion. Since its first introduction in 1999, the definition has also changed regularly. It is the most
recent official response to the statistical challenges of measuring development: not abandoning the
historical and traditional methodology, but adding a second series of numbers. At the same time, it is a
(timid) acceptance of the decades-old complaint, initially offered by Bernal: the statistics on money spent on
research “is delusive because it includes money spent on non-profit making plant on a semi-industrial scale,
an expense far greater than that of scientific research proper”.

Research and Development - World’s top 10 leaders statistics

Expenditure on R&D (GERD)
Expenditure by type of R&D activity
Latest on
Country available R&D (GERD) Basic Applied Experimental
year in '000 Unknown
research research development
current PPP$ (%)
(%) (%) (%)

United States 2008 398.194.000 17,4 22,3 60,3
Japan 2008 148.719.235 11,4 21,7 62,6 4,3
China 2008 121.369.732 4,8 12,5 82,8
France 2008 46.262.320 25,4 39,0 35,6
Republic of Korea 2008 43.906.413 16,1 19,6 64,3
United Kingdom 2008 40.096.350 8,8 40,6 50,6
Russian Federation 2009 33.368.083 21,0 20,1 58,9
Italy 2008 24.510.194 27,0 45,6 27,4
Spain 2008 20.434.838 20,9 43,3 35,8
India 2005 19.617.935 18,1 25,1 22,0 34,8
Total Average 89.647.910 17,1 29,0 50,0

Fig 1 - World’s top 10 leaders in gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) by type of R&D activity, 2009
or latest available year7.

Notes:

 Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UIS database, June 2011, Science and Technology Statistical
table 30.
 Source for PPP conversion factor (local currency per international $): World Bank; World
Development Indicators, as of April 2011.

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UNESCO Institute for Statistics



Expenditure on R&D (GERD)
by type of R&D funding
Latest
Country available By By By
By By
year Business Higher Private
Government Abroad
enterprise education non-profit
% %
% % %

United States 2008 67,3 27,1 2,7 3,0 NA
Japan 2008 78,2 15,6 5,1 0,7 0,4
China 2008 71,7 23,6 NA NA 1,2
France 2008 50,7 38,9 1,2 1,1 8,0
Republic of Korea 2008 72,9 25,4 1,0 0,4 0,3
United Kingdom 2008 45,4 30,7 1,2 4,9 17,7
Russian Federation 2008 28,7 64,7 0,5 0,2 5,9
Italy 2008 45,2 42,9 1,3 2,8 7,8
Spain 2008 45,0 45,6 3,2 0,6 5,7
India 2008 NA NA NA NA Na
Total Average 56,1 34,9 2,0 1,7 5,9

Fig 2 - World’s top 10 leaders in gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) by type of R&D funding, 2008 8.

Notes:

 Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UIS database, June 2011, Science and Technology Statistical
table 30.
 “NA” – Data not available

 “Business enterprise” - R&D expenditure in the business sector, where the business sector in the
context of R&D statistics includes (Source OECD - 2002, Frascati Manual):
o All firms, organizations and institutions whose primary activity is the market production of
goods or services (other than higher education) for sale to the general public at an
economically significant price.
o The private non-profit institutions mainly serving them.
 “Government” - R&D expenditure in the government sector, where the government sector in the
context of R&D statistics includes (Source OECD - 2002, Frascati Manual):
o All departments, offices and other bodies which furnish, but normally do not sell to the
community, those common services, other than higher education, which cannot otherwise
be conveniently and economically provided, as well as those that administer the state and
the economic and social policy of the community. Public enterprises are included in the
business enterprise sector.
o The non-profit institutions (NPIs) controlled and mainly financed by government but not
administered by the higher education sector.
 “Higher education” - R&D expenditure in the higher education sector, where the higher education
sector in the context of R&D statistics includes (Source OECD - 2002, Frascati Manual):
o All universities, colleges of technology and other institutions of post-secondary education,
whatever their source of finance or legal status.

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UNESCO Institute for Statistics



o It also includes all research institutes, experimental stations and clinics operating under the
direct control of or administered by or associated with higher education institutions.
 “Private non-profit” - The Private non-profit sector in the context of R&D statistics includes (Source
OECD - 2002, Frascati Manual):
o Non-market, private non-profit institutions serving households (i.e. the general public).
o Private individuals or households.
 “Abroad” - In the context of R&D statistics, abroad refers to (Source OECD - 2002, Frascati
Manual):
o All institutions and individuals located outside the political borders of a country; except
vehicles, ships, aircraft and space satellites operated by domestic entities and testing
grounds acquired by such entities.
o All international organizations (except business enterprises), including facilities and
operations within a country’s borders.

Research and Development - Regional average statistics

Fig 3 - Gross domestic expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDP, 2009 or latest available year

The previous Fig 3 illustrates the percentage of GDP devoted to R&D activities. This indicator reflects
national R&D intensity by presenting gross domestic R&D expenditure relative to the size of the national
economy.



The 2007 regional averages, in descending order, are:

 2.6% for North America;
 1.9% for Oceania;
 1.6% for Europe;
 1.6% for Asia;
 0.6% for Latin America and the Caribbean;
 0.4% for Africa.

Conclusion

What we learned ?

 Development has been a Research practice from the beginning
 Development original mission has been modified for firm’s interests
 The average of world’s top 10 leaders in gross domestic expenditure on R&D activity is assigned for
50% to Development
 The average of world’s top 10 leaders in gross domestic expenditure on R&D funding is assigned for
56,1% to business enterprise
 The so called “developing countries” present the lowest level of percentage of GDP devoted to R&D
activities

Guilds

Guilds have contributed at patent laws but they indicated an interesting approach to social organization as
well.

A guild9 is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as
confraternities of workers. … An important result of the guild framework was the emergence of universities
at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford around the year 1200; they originated as guilds of students as at Bologna, or
of masters as at Paris. … The structures of the craftsmen's associations tended everywhere in similar
directions: a governing body, assisting functionaries and the members' assembly. The governing body
consisted of the leader and deputies. … The guild was made up by experienced and confirmed experts in
their field of handicraft. They were called master craftsmen. Before a new employee could rise to the level of
mastery, he had to go through a schooling period during which he was first called an apprentice. After this
period he could rise to the level of journeyman. Apprentices would typically not learn more than the most
basic techniques until they were trusted by their peers to keep the guild's or company's secrets.

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Guild - Wikipedia



Like journey, the distance that could be travelled in a day, the title 'journeyman' derives from the French
words for 'day' (jour and journée) from which came the middle English word journei. Journeymen were able
to work for other masters, unlike apprentices, and generally paid by the day and were thus day labourers.
After being employed by a master for several years, and after producing a qualifying piece of work, the
apprentice was granted the rank of journeyman and was given documents (letters or certificates from his
master and/or the guild itself) which certified him as a journeyman and entitled him to travel to other towns
and countries to learn the art from other masters. These journeys could span large parts of Europe and were
an unofficial way of communicating new methods and techniques, though by no means all journeymen
made such travels - they were most common in Germany and Italy, and in other countries journeymen from
small cities would often visit the capital. After this journey and several years of experience, a journeyman
could be received as master craftsman, though in some guilds this step could be made straight from
apprentice. This would typically require the approval of all masters of a guild, a donation of money and
other goods (often omitted for sons of existing members), and the production of a so-called masterpiece,
which would illustrate the abilities of the aspiring master craftsman; this was often retained by the guild.

The medieval guild was established by charters or letters patent or similar authority by the city or the ruler
and normally held a monopoly on trade in its craft within the city in which it operated: handicraft workers
were forbidden by law to run any business if they were not members of a guild, and only masters were
allowed to be members of a guild. Before these privileges were legislated, these groups of handicraft
workers were simply called 'handicraft associations'. The town authorities might be represented in the guild
meetings and thus had a means of controlling the handicraft activities. This was important since towns very
often depended on a good reputation for export of a narrow range of products, on which not only the
guild's, but the town's, reputation depended. Controls on the association of physical locations to well-known
exported products, helped to establish a town's place in global commerce — this led to modern trademarks.

The economic consequences of guilds have led to heated debates among European historians. Ogilvie
argues that their long apprenticeships were unnecessary to acquire skills, and their conservatism reduced
the rate of innovation and made the society poorer. She says their main goal was rent seeking, that is, to
shift money to the membership at the expense of the entire economy. Epstein and Prak's book rejects
Ogilvie's conclusions. Specifically, Epstein argues that guilds were cost-sharing rather than rent-seeking
institutions. They located and matched masters and likely apprentices through monitored learning. Whereas
the acquisition of craft skills required experience-based learning, he argues that this process necessitated
many years in apprenticeship.

Conclusion

What we learned ?

 Guild played an important role to support knowledge and skills of a specific social domain



 Guild formalized an organizational approach based on different levels of knowledge and skills, and
on three concepts seen as sequential steps in the process leading to innovation:
o imitation (as demanded to apprentice) 
o invention (as demanded to journeyman) 
o innovation (as demanded to craftsmen)
 Guild, made up by experienced and confirmed experts in their field of handicraft called master
craftsmen “applied” what we know as the linear model of innovation:
o research (as knowledge)
o development (as apprenticeship)
o production (as journeyman) 
o diffusion (as journey)

The Italian Renaissance

The Renaissance10 was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in
Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more
loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across
Europe, this is a general use of the term. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a flowering of literature,
science, art, religion, and politics, and a resurgence of learning based on classical sources, the development
of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. Traditionally, this
intellectual transformation has resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as a bridge between the Middle
Ages and the Modern era. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well
as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions
of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".

The Italian Renaissance11 began the opening phase of the Renaissance. Although the origins of a movement
that was confined largely to the literate culture of intellectual endeavor and patronage can be traced to the
earlier part of the 14th century, many aspects of Italian culture and society remained largely Medieval; the
Renaissance did not come into full swing until the end of the century. The word renaissance (Rinascimento
in Italian) means “rebirth”, and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical
antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labeled the Dark Ages. The Italian Renaissance is best
known for its cultural achievements. Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with Petrarch (best
known for the elegantly polished vernacular sonnet sequence of the Canzoniere and for the craze for book
collecting that he initiated) and his friend and contemporary Boccaccio (author of the Decameron). Famous
vernacular poets of the 15th century include the renaissance epic authors Luigi Pulci (author of Morgante),
Matteo Maria Boiardo (Orlando Innamorato), and Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando Furioso). 15th century writers
such as the poet Poliziano and the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino made extensive translations from
both Latin and Greek. In the early 16th century, Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier) laid out his vision of

10
Renaissance - Wikipedia
11
The Italian Renaissance - Wikipedia



the ideal gentleman and lady, while Machiavelli cast a jaundiced eye on "la verità effettuale della cosa"—
the actual truth of things—in The Prince, composed, humanist style, chiefly of parallel ancient and modern
examples of Virtù. Italian Renaissance painting exercised a dominant influence on subsequent European
painting (see Western painting) for centuries afterwards, with artists such as Giotto di Bondone, Masaccio,
Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo da
Vinci, and Titian. The same is true for architecture, as practiced by Brunelleschi, Leone Alberti, Andrea
Palladio, and Bramante. Their works include Florence Cathedral, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and the Tempio
Malatestiano in Rimini (to name a only a few, not to mention many splendid private residences: see
Renaissance architecture). Finally, the Aldine Press, founded by the printer Aldo Manuzio, active in Venice,
developed Italic type and the small, relatively portable and inexpensive printed book that could be carried in
one's pocket, as well as being the first to publish editions of books in Ancient Greek.

Lorenzo de' Medici12 was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the
Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by contemporary Florentines,
he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets. His life coincided with the high point
of the early Italian Renaissance; his death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The fragile peace
he helped maintain between the various Italian states collapsed with his death. Lorenzo de' Medici is buried
in the Medici Chapel in Florence. Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, was the first member of the
Medici family to combine running the Medici bank with leading the Republic. Cosimo, one of the wealthiest
men in Europe, spent a very large portion of his fortune in government and philanthropy. He was a patron of
the arts and funded public works. Lorenzo's father, Piero 'the Gouty' de' Medici, was also at the center of
Florentine life, active as an art patron and collector. His mother Lucrezia Tornabuoni was a poet and writer
of sonnets. She was also a friend to figures like Luigi Pulci and Agnolo Poliziano and became her son's
advisor when he took over power. Lorenzo's court included artists such as Piero and Antonio del Pollaiuolo,
Andrea del Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Michelangelo
Buonarroti who were involved in the 15th century Renaissance. Although he did not commission many
works himself, he helped them secure commissions from other patrons. Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo and
his family for five years, dining at the family table and attending meetings of the Neo-Platonic Academy.
Lorenzo was an artist himself, writing poetry in his native Tuscan. Cosimo had started the collection of books
which became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library) and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's
agents retrieved from the East large numbers of classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy
his books and disseminate their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism
through his circle of scholarly friends who studied Greek philosophers, and attempted to merge the ideas of
Plato with Christianity; among this group were the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola.

Renaissance humanism 13 was an intellectual movement in Europe of the later Middle Ages and the Early
Modern period. The 19th-century German historian Georg Voigt (1827–91) identified Petrarch as the first
Renaissance humanist. Paul Johnson agrees that Petrarch was "the first to put into words the notion that
the centuries between the fall of Rome and the present had been the age of Darkness.” According to
Petrarch, what was needed to remedy this situation was the careful study and imitation of the great

12
Lorenzo de’ Medici - Wikipedia
13
Humanism - Wikipedia


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