As with my Résumé/Manifesto, the Draft Enterprise Model is an older piece of work (from June 2007) that I’d be just as happy never to see again; but I think it at least helps to give a more comprehensive impression of my background and intentions.

This one is especially useful because I managed to include more references and sources than I normally tend to. The way I like to work is to blaze ahead forming original ideas (I always learn something new when I write); then I go out looking for things other people have said that might support or contradict them.

But I usually don’t return to my old ideas: I consider them results that show me how I’m performing, what’s working well for me, what I might need to improve, etc. – the way athletes assess their performance. When I occasionally do return to old ideas, it’s usually with the same attitude that athletes review old game tapes. Reviewing past results helps reveal performance weaknesses (which might affect future work, not just a given piece); it helps me adjust my mental habits, composing rules and theories that I can master intuitively, applying them to different situations, going over them in my mind until I don’t have to think about them any more. Then the next time I find inspiration, I can blaze ahead again – generating new results – restarting the whole process.

At first glance this practice might seem too narrow-minded or disregarding – paying little attention to other people’s prior work – but that isn’t the case at all. I don’t just study my own past results, I study other people’s results just as carefully. The process oscillates between freedom and discipline, and even within the free mode it oscillates between freedom to create and freedom to discover. While I’m composing, I’m not encumbered by other people’s ideas; while I’m researching, I’m not encumbered by my own ideas. It’s all about seeing clearly what is actually in front of me.

I’ve done this for a long time now, deliberately trying to master the practice since 2002, and having used the method naively for as long as I can remember. Along the way it has introduced me to (and forced me to respect) a greater range of ideas than most people even realize exist. I don’t find any ideas that radically change my perspective or worldview: I’ve already seen life from all the angles. (I know I’m exaggerating, and I now that – like my statements the other day – this may seem like an immodest or arrogant thing to say. But I don’t think it’s bragging to call attention to an actual effort I’ve made. Other people have degrees and awards to speak for their labours; I’m compelled to be a little more vocal on my own behalf.) I became familiar with so many ideas because I spent the better part of a decade deliberately trying to prove myself wrong – every single day – and I was wholly devoted to that task, almost exclusively.

This approach isn’t pure skepticism; it is rather like what Carol Dweck describes as a “growth mindset,” or what Jacques Barzun calls (from a broader social and historical perspective), “spirited pessimism.” As historian Daniel Boorstin explains his own, similar attitude:

I am, then, a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist. If our mission is
an endless search, how can we fail? In the short run, institutions and professions and even language keep us in the discouraging ruts. But in the long run the ruts wear away and adventuring amateurs reward us by a wonderful vagrancy into the unexpected.

That perfectly illustrates my intentions for Open Conceptual: it’s a kind of fluid enterprise that keeps streaming freely over all of the ruts, eroding, levelling, softening, redefining our conceptual landscape. Of course, it can’t just wash everything away; it remixes everything, rearranging and resolving, or as the kids say, “mashing-up” the structures and contours underlying the many diverse disciplines.

Now, it might seem that I’ve gone from ideas that were becoming clear in June to ideas that are even more ambiguous and vague; it might seem like the past two months have been counterproductive. But this is just another cycle of oscillation; this is another period of rearranging and resolving. Each time around, my reach grows broader, my appreciation grows deeper, my descriptions become more precise, my references become more suitable, and the overall organization becomes more intuitive – my creativity and discovery become more free.

But the way to cultivate freedom is not freedom itself, it is discipline. Over time, as familiarity and proficiency increase, generating capital in the form of knowledge and competence, it becomes prudent to invest that liquidity into something more solid: theory.

At some point (like the point I’ve reached within the past few months) it may become apparent that your basic attitudes and ideas aren’t going to change very much – you’ve already done enough work and research that it’s safe to settle into some kind of pattern or system. Or to put it more urgently, it’s inevitable that you will eventually settle – whether or not you do it explicitly and intentionally – so it’s a good idea to do it deliberately. This way you at least have something articulate to work with, which allows you to more effectively monitor and evaluate the results of your ideas.

More importantly, as work and ideas become more complex, there must be some way to organize and manage them – some kind of map or architecture to help you navigate it. And it’s objectiveness facilitates communication and conciliation with other people’s ideas. When two people with explicit theories find themselves disagreeing, they have more options than to merely “agree to disagree”: they can move levers, test variables, observe differences, and reformulate assumptions. (I’m not saying they will be able to reconcile their ideas – or that they’ll even try – but that a degree of articulation is a precondition for conciliation.)

Beyond this, having an articulate theory gives you a real commodity to market. And if they’re organized well enough – into coherent conceptual networks, or systems – they may acquire a kind of life of their own, sustaining themselves apart from your own intentions and efforts. We might consider this to be the ‘aim’ of any theory – to go from being, say, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to “Darwinism,” from Karl Marx’s economic theories to “Marxism,” etc.

That’s sort of what I’m trying to do here – but I’m not trying to create an ‘ism.’ Those have tended to be too closely identified with the creator’s personality (even though creators often try to disown the ism that bears their name). I only want to put together enough of a theory so it acquires a life of its own, so that it can become other people’s theory as well, so we can work collaboratively on it, building an investment that generates financial, educational, and social capital in self-sustaining and original ways.

I’m trying to approach theorizing as a business-like enterprise. The most important thing I can say about it is that the theory isn’t an end in itself, it isn’t a totally genuine attempt to compose a “true” theory of creativity. It is a way to study the creative, strategic, organizational, and administrative processes involved in a theorizing enterprise. It’s about mastering the practice of theory.

[Go to Draft Enterprise Model]

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Introduction:

This is a germinal outline for a very open business model, for a very open and adaptive type of enterprise.

Open Conceptual was founded for the purpose of developing intellectual resources, and one such resource is the business model itself: “innovating the company’s business model… itself is a part of the company’s innovation task.”[1]

To even call it a “business model” is misleading. This is more correctly an “enterprise model,” because the enterprise involves scientific, artistic, commercial and civic aims equally.

The Scientific Side:

This is an experiment, an attempt to make a conceptual leap towards a new model of human enterprise, leaving behind as much conceptual baggage from the old models as possible. What is meant here by “conceptual” is any idea, image, word, metaphor, principle, etc. that ‘frames’ the way we learn, think, work, live, and create.

It is common to talk about ‘new ways’ of working and living, but we tend to do so using the old vocabularies and frames[2]; so the “leap” never gets off the ground[3]. Most attempts either are pulled apart by conflicting sets of inertia or eventually settle back into old models and methods.

The focus of Open Conceptual’s work is at the threshold where the “leap” may either fail or succeed. This requires employing the enterprise itself as an experiment — keeping it dynamic and continually reworking it in order to observe the results.

But the fact that Open Conceptual is an experiment doesn’t mean that it must conform to established scientific methods. In fact, it is precisely those methods — and their underlying attitude and assumptions — that are under investigation.[4]

This is not a perfectly controlled, closed experiment; it is open – both outwardly and inwardly. In the first place this means opening out into new perspectives, generating insight. Secondly it means being open to a fairly high degree of chaos – playing – and hoping to observe something previously unimaginable.

More simply, this means attempting to generate hypotheses, not prove them — that’s what traditional institutions are for. (And Open Conceptual is not an attempt to undermine those institutions; it is an attempt to build beyond them.)

Technology and culture are changing rapidly; conventional, ’safe’ methods of inquiry may not be able to keep pace. Something new may be needed.

Open Conceptual may not be that “something new” which could possibly deal with the full scope of emergent complexity; but it can at least contribute, helping to generate insight, cultivating the necessary conditions for broader and deeper appreciation — towards a general theory of creativity.

The Commercial Side:

A new ‘theory of creativity’ seems to be both necessary and attainable in light of new realities. Necessary because of increasing complexity: we need an articulated general concept of motivation, learning, progress, and growth. Attainable because of the tools and resources that are now available — like the web.

Open Conceptual’s core resource is not so much the theory itself — which may never be complete, given the nature of such ideas — but the activity involved in developing it. This works to generate ‘incidental resources’: knowledge and competencies. These can hardly be anticipated or planned for; the most useful ones are often the least expected: they occur as insights.

Open Conceptual’s evolving business model is based on utilizing these incidental resources – the growing body of insights – to generate capital in order to finance ongoing development – a process which in turn produces more more effective knowledge and competencies.[5]

(The long-term goal represents the scientific and civic elements of the Open Conceptual attitude; the short-term practices represent the commercial and artistic elements.)

‘

Incidental resources’ might take the form of book and business proposals, consulting services (creative-conceptual development, ideation, training, communications, etc.), publishing, public speaking, media production, conference promotion, art shows, or some medium that doesn’t even exist yet. (Actually, “preparing for emerging forms of media,” expresses Open Conceptual’s mission quite well.)

The Artistic Side:

When we think of different modes of creativity we think of painting, literature, music, poetry, architecture, etc. But creativity enters into every aspect of human life — especially during stages of learning and development.[6]

Psychologists who examine creative individuals often include scientists, civic leaders, business people and politicians in their work[7]. Recognizing opportunities and solving problems in any field involves the same general processes as more ‘artistic’ modes of creativity.

Furthermore, the changing nature of work through the past century has generated entirely new creative specializations. The type of person who might have became an ‘artist’ in 1850 might have instead became an ‘art director’ in 1950 — think of Andy Warhol, who first established himself illustrating shoe ads.

The design-attitude is now spreading from products and advertisements to the development of whole companies — new industries even. This is most clearly demonstrated by recent innovations in professional education, especially at business schools. (See, for example, U of T’s Rotman School of Business; also see Stanford’s d-school.) And let’s not neglect to note that such programs are also designed.

Open Conceptual is about penetrating more broadly and deeply in this vein – using depth of understanding to generate greater breadth of relevance, and vice versa — to design the philosophical frameworks of any mode of creativity and enterprise.

Civic:

Above all, Open Conceptual is based on the notion that a better world begins with education — in the most general sense of the word. Not just in formal or institutional settings, but in the sense that each individual has a personal responsibility for their own competencies and knowledge.

Cultivating knowledge and competencies — broadening and deepening our understanding of the world and our effectiveness in it — is intrinsically rewarding. These are ‘generative goods’ that we can seek as individuals which actually enable others to do the same, promoting greater opportunities in a “good society.”[8]

Open Conceptual intends to become an advocate for education outside of its traditional settings, to encourage people to responsibly cultivate knowledge and competencies, and to facilitate some of the ‘conversations’ which thus emerge.[9]

By doing so, intrinsic or subjective creativity may develop into objective accomplishments — scientific discoveries, works of art, commercial enterprises, civic institutions. These objects then form the structure through which even greater creative opportunities may be found and pursued.[10]

Creativity is meaningless unless it results in something objective, but results are meaningless unless they facilitate subjective well being — happiness — by making us more effective and appreciative in life.

The Creative Discipline:

Mastering ‘creativity’ involves gaining insight into a wealth of disciplines and domains. For example, insights gained in ‘general creativity’ promote a realignment of understanding in other disciplines — like psychology and philosophy of science. This is more about realignment — upgrading and downgrading the importance of specific concepts in relation to each other – rather than refutations or (dis)proofs.

‘Creativity’ doesn’t really exist as a distinct discipline or domain. There isn’t really a core theoretical foundation to refute or disprove; there are merely some ideas that have been suggested from other fields.

[Work in progress; much more to come soon…]

Notes:

[1] Henry Chesbrough, Open Business Models, 2006.

[2] Much philosophical energy of the past century has been devoted to the ‘philosophy of language,’ which involves analysis of how language relates to, or corresponds with, the world, things, ideas, ‘truth,’ etc. In the latter half of the century ‘cognitive science’ has emerged to study the same types of problems from a more empirical, neurological, computational approach. I only mention these fields in order to point out that I know enough about them to know what I don’t know; or rather, I know enough to know that I don’t care to know more – for now. Anyways, I associate “vocabularies” with Richard Rorty and “frames” with George Lakoff. If you want a good introduction to the broader field of ideas, start with Steven Pinker.

[3] [This note added 12 Sept 07] Since writing this I’ve discovered that another “creative generalist,” Steve Hardy, who blogs at http://www.creativegeneralist.com,/ frequently mentions this notion of a creative “leap” in the same sense.

[4] Consider Karl Popper’s influential theory that science proceeds by positing falsifiable hypotheses rather than ‘proving’ them. See Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ science. Also see Paul Feyerabend’s more radical position of ‘anarchic science’; as well as Micheal Polanyi’s concepts of ‘personal knowledge,’ ‘tacit knowing,’ and ‘heuristic passion,’ and their effects on science.

[5] Using what Chris Argyris calls “double-loop learning,” which means changing or developing our “boundary conditions” — such as goals – whereas “single-loop learning” would be to simply change the way we maintain stability or performance within those boundary conditions.

[6] Now more than ever. See Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind (2005).

[7] Specifically Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (1997), and Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinski, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (1993).

[8] The importance of ‘competence’ and effectiveness (or “effectance”) covered in Robert White’s 1959 paper, “Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence”, and competence has become a focal point of psychology since then. “Intrinsic motivation” is commonly associated with psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. See Deci’s 1996 popularization (with Richard Flaste), Why We Do What We Do. The concept of ’generativity’ found its way onto this page via psychologist Dan McAdams’s Stories We Live By (1993). And the “good society” is a reference to sociologist Robert Bellah et al’s Good Society (1991), which provided much of the direction the theme of this work. For a different perspective on the same theme see Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000).

[9] For an explanation of the full sense of the term ’conversation’ as used here, see Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). And to observe the value of this conversation in action, read the many comments made by some of the world’s most eminent philosophers, about Rorty’s recent passing.

[10] For a more comprehensive idea of the direction I’m going here, consider Anthony Giddens’s concept of “structuration.”

[Originally written in June 2007, unless otherwise noted. See the The Practice of Theory: Prefacing the Draft Enterprise Model.]

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