Emerging Futures - Volume 21: Key Tools for Emergent Innovation

Well, it's been a week! Lots of things have been going on in our world, but…

First, a happy New Year and a happy beginning to the year of the Tiger. Another new year, another beginning — and for us another beginning in the middle. We are in the midst of storms and rains, ice, and snow, spring semesters under full-sail now and much else.  

We’ve been extra busy designing curriculum and programming for the Picatinny-Arsenal in addition to a 14-day international innovation bootcamp from New York City to Austria. But what has really been getting us up in the morning is reflecting on the how of emergence…

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Innovation is Emergent: Engaging Emergence

To ground this week’s newsletter in what and how to innovate, we’ve outlined the basic logic of emergence and creativity in an article detailing the general logic emergence affords innovators.

It’s worth taking a moment to return to a quote from Gary Tomlinson we used last week, as he  gives us a good simple definition to begin from: “Emergence denotes the presence of properties, features, behaviors, or capacities that appear in systems but are not easily traceable to their component parts.” (Tomlinson).

This quality of “not being easily traceable to a specific source” becomes the definition of emergence. In some cases of emergence it’s not only difficult to trace a feature back to a specific source, it is fundamentally impossible — the feature is truly an emergent property of the whole.

From the “parts” a whole emerges. And this “whole” becomes distinct from and irreducible to the parts. And ultimately the “whole” starts to even shape the parts.

While life and consciousness are good examples of emergence, so too are all sorts of organizations. Such as:

• art practice
• a corporation
• an individual
• a social movement
• or a police force

These are all examples of complex systems that can be said “to have a mind of their own.” In each case (the individual who is alive or the art practice or the organization or the police force) there is a tight interdependent network that “individuates” or can be said to produce an operational separation from a related “outside” (that it also co-shapes).

But, enough with the “what” — today we are going to focus on some basic principles of how to innovate with emergence. In future newsletters and blog posts we will go deeper.

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Working with Emergence: Some General Concepts

There can be a lot of misconceptions when you start to develop an innovation approach take emergence into account:

• It’s not about scale: when everything is about systems, fields and multiple possibilities it is easy to assume we are talking exclusively about large scale systems. But emergence happens at all scales and it is much easier to get a feel for how to work with it by beginning at a small scale. Making a meal or sharpening a pencil both engage emergent logics. We wrote a blog post about taskscapes and cooking eggs that is a good introduction to this.
• It’s far more hands on: while the classical linear and ineffective innovation methods have a clear beginning (ideation), and a far more abstract logic, — working with emergence means lots of hands on engagement. You need to get a sense of the systems and this can only happen via active probing and sensing. Emergence is surprising and these surprises emerge only in response to some action. You need to do a lot (in a considered manner). There is little place for arm-chair speculation, grand visions, and removed discussions of possible futures — especially at the beginning. You need to develop an active and experimental approach where novel emergent outcomes lead; not predefined ideas. The fundamental question is always: “What can x do? And what else can it do?” We have written extensively on this in regards to the unintended.
• It’s not about singular outcomes but multiplicities: Any one action or outcome is but a single point in a field of possibilities. Any one outcome is because of an emergent process arising from an assemblage. These emergent processes always give rise to a field of possibilities. Even if we understand ourselves to be making a solitary object — it is “haunted” by a field of possibility. For example: you are making the perfect sunny-side up egg — but you could flip it, or scramble it, or even burn it to carbon. These possibilities are there the moment the assemblage of egg + pan + oil + heat, etc. are in place — they are just not “actualized” and remain “virtual”. These possibilities are constrained patterns of possibility. Everything is variation and contrast. Accidents and mistakes are part of this field — simply as other possibilities of the system.
• It’s about playing with relationships more than things: think about our egg cooking example — none of the “things” are changing — the pan, oil, egg and heat stay the same — just their relations change. An over-easy egg is about developing a relation of both “sides” of the egg to the pan. Cracking the egg lets it have a new relationship with gravity (the flattening of the egg into its classical disk shape). Now we are in a work of events (congealing, burning, carmelizing, etc) with thresholds and multiple distinct states — it is less about things and far more about processes and events. Working this way also means working both more indirectly (say making new tools), and at multiple scales.
  You know the negative much better than the positive: True emergent novelty (the goal of innovation in this case) cannot be known in advance — it will surprise you. While you cannot know what novelty will emerge, you can know what you do not what to repeat (the old). Refusing — blocking while refusing to confine the future to what might want (ideation) is critical. You are attentive to what arises, open to actively following the novel and actively resisting the know. Blind to the future, and clear eyed about the past. This is very different from classical creativity which presumes to know the future and acts from a visionary (future seeing) perspective — god-like and free of curiosity… (enough said).

Seven quick takeaways:

• Privilege doing over thinking
• Engage, create, and experiment far more than ideate
• Document your work. Make notes. Sketch the assemblage and the field.
• Co-evolve with your experiments.
• Consider the total field of possibilities
• Maintain an open approach of curiosity
• Suppress solutions
  

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Understanding the Components

We have already introduced many of the key components (fields, assemblages, the virtual and the actual, etc.) in passing. Now let's really get to know them and how we work with them in more detail. Let’s walk through emergence region by region, identifying the components, and noting some key practices.

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Assemblages, Networks and Taskscapes

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From the perspective of our everyday engagement with emergent systems assemblages are what we mainly encounter: a tight network of things, practices, concepts, habits and environments. We live in and of assemblages.

Think as you reach for your coffee - consider the web of interacting relations: Coffee beans, roasters, grinders, water, stovetops, filters, cups, drinking, bodies, habits, histories, etc.

All of reality is connected and organized in networks of processes. Nothing is solitary— everything is configurations— an organized and stable pattern of process. These webs of process entangle everything. But reality is not simply one massive undefined web of relations. Networks of relations individuate, and have a distinct character. Some of these networks form in ways that cannot be easily separated— these semi-non-decomposable ones are “emergent”.

Our daily lives are full of these — in reality it is pretty much everything — we are always in a complex highly dynamic emergent situation.

Assemblages emerge from constrained self-organizing material processes and give rise to emergent processes.

• “Below” are self-organizing material processes
• “Above” are emergent processes (a field of possible outcomes)
• “Beside” are constraining forces
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What this means for innovation: ‍

• The key for innovation is to sense, see and understand the assemblages that most directly
• impact your endeavor.
• Diagram the assemblage
• Sense what happens when you change parts (substitution, intensity, etc.)
• Be experimental — this is the level you can have the most effect.

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Self-Organizing Matter

The assemblages of everyday life all emerge from the constrained self-organizing practices of matter. Materials stabilize with phases, states, properties: liquid, solid, flexible, brittle, absorbent, etc. (We have written extensively on this. Here is a good article.)

What this means for innovation:

• From the perspective of an assemblage — we work in two directions: “below” at the level of self-organizing matter and “above” at the level of emergent processes.
• To change assemblages is to work with how matter organizes itself to coax new states and properties

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Emergent Processes & Fields

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Emerging out of the dynamic relations of an assemblage are constrained processes.  

While we most often sense what is emerging from an assemblage as a singular and solitary “thing” — think back to the above egg example — these processes are giving rise to a field of related possibilities.

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It is helpful to understand these as a type of landscape formed of peaks and valleys. Valleys are stable states of the system, and the peaks and ridges are the thresholds between differing states or possibilities of the system. If an emergent outcome is the ball it will tend to roll into the deepest and most stable valley and stay there. Emergent systems are always in a state that will have stronger and weaker tendencies.

The danger with this landscape image is that we conceive of this “ground” as stable. In actuality the ground is dynamic and highly responsive to changes to the assemblage. For example: if you increase the heat in your pan the basin of attraction that equals “burnt” will dynamic expand and deepen…

The “ground” is more like a highly stretchy sheet undulating in the wind.

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These multiple tendencies can be diagrammed as a open and dynamic topological field of possibilities. And this field will be enlarged or changed via experimentation (at any and all levels).

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Here it is important to see the relation between the levels (see above): the assemblage gives rise to processes that constrains a field of possibilities that lead to an actual outcome that in turn becomes part of the assemblage. This is why it is inaccurate to speak of “above” and “below” — for all components are looping — what was above goes below — a looping of difference differing…

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What This Means for Innovation

• You can act at different levels with very different effectiveness

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Act at the level of the actual and you are moving one thing towards a new basin (change in degree). This is like making an actual specific cup of coffee. The assemblage is all in place and you are carrying out the steps to actualize a specific possibility.

The advantage of this is it is immediate. The disadvantage is that it is not novel — you are going from one existing state of the system to another. The basin of attraction you are moving into might be new to you — but it is not actually new.

That said, this exploratory behavior is critical to exploring and discovering the possibilities of an emergent system. You have to experimentally “walk” the terrain: what are all the possibilities of this configuration of the assemblage?

This can only happen via direct experimentation. You are enlarging and stabilizing the given field. But — for genuine novelty — you have to first participate in the emergence of a new field:

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This happens at the level of the assemblage. Change the assemblage and you will change the field (change in kind). Here are dialog — really a dance emerges: tweak the assemblage, then experiment in actualizing within the field, then fold that back into the assemblage, etc. You are working in, across and between the levels. You are changing hats and methods rapidly. You are becoming an expert at the indirect and the direct — acting on the particular and seeing the emergent field.

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System Causation

As you get good at this dance of multi-scaled, multi-modal, multi-skilled co-emergence for novelty you sense the agency of system level of emergence: the whole is “making” the “parts”. (We discussed this in detail in this week’s article on Emergence).

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What this means for innovation:

1. As you sense the emergent logic of a system as a whole you can experimentally block assemblages that play critical roles in the resiliency and stability of the emergent system.
2. These experimental blockages will open up a space to sense, probe and experiment with novel possibilities latent but suppressed by the previous state of the system.
3. These in turn are coaxed, stabilized and integrated into novel assemblages.

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Emergence Is the Key Tool for Innovation

Where do we turn when we run out of ideas?

How do we keep up & stand out among our peers when novelty is required?

It boils down to a numbers game:

If the number of ideas one can generate are limited (see brainstorming for more than 5 minutes.)

And the number of good ideas are a fraction of the ideas you output and develop.

It won't be long before you're sitting there without much to contribute to the team.

But, worse than that, at some point you and your team will realize that ideas are inherently conservative and are reflective of the existing possibilities of a system.

So you need new ways to generate genuinely creative opportunities.

Where can we turn?

Tools that offer an actual connection to novelty. These are tools for engaging with emergent innovation.

The focus shifts to working directly and experimentally at many levels at once across the system.

Creativity is about experimentally developing new systems level emergent processes.

Creativity — emergent novelty — has always been part of reality, it is ongoing. We are a product of emergent processes and an agent (one of many) in their on-goingness.

When we step back to consider the 7 interlinked components of emergent systems against an issue that requires new approaches, we can begin to see the limitless possibilities any matter of concern offers.

Working with worldly innovation tools can distinguish and catapult everything from a career, to large scale ecological change.

Please try out these tools this week. Be in touch. And let’s keep experimenting!

Till Volume 22,
Jason and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab
We’re How You Innovate

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