in which signals are picked up from the environment and the acquisition of knowledge is given priority is therefore the first condition. Next, people must possess the skills needed to implement relevant ideas and concepts in the best manner. Knowledge of the market, of technology, of society, and so on, is indispensable. Communication is the key in this process of exploration and revision. Giving shape to the discourse that bears fruit and making it functionally usable—that is the challenge that lies ahead for the disciplines of modern identity and communication design.
This concerns improvements or revisions of existing solutions and their application. It also pertains to services and their provision, communication with clients and target groups and, last but not least, improvements in the production, marketing and business processes themselves. Only in the integration of these challenges is an innovation dynamic achieved that reflects an awareness of the social context and makes this context its starting point. The gauging and stressing of social concepts and needs (the metronome of the market) are central parameters in this that form the basis for interaction between producers and consumers, and that continue to inspire the business culture in this area of tension. This dynamic between the sense of possibility and sense of reality forms the motivation behind a steady stream of paradigm changes within an organisation.
With the concept of ‘innovation’, an entirely new road has opened. Innovation not only focuses on ‘more’, but also, and especially, ‘different’—in which ‘more’ as a side effect is still desirable. Seventy-nine years ago, the economists Cobb and Douglas discovered that technological progress significantly influenced growth. They came up with a mathematical formula to express this. This in itself was innovative. Ten years later, Schumpeter discovered that growth does not continue uninterrupted because of technological progress, but occurs in cycles in which the progress continues to renew itself. To express this, Schumpeter came up with the concept of ‘basic innovation’. He remarked that innovation has not only technological but also organisational aspects. This too was an innovation. When we talk about innovation in the post-isms era we are in today, we have to ask the following question: How should our culture develop in order to avoid the feeling— with the onset of increasingly faster progress—of being ‘too late’ and in order to pluck the fruits that it bears? We cannot stop time, but we can revise the rules of the game. We have to start with people—ourselves, our culture. A new term could perhaps be: post-innovative development. Language can also be innovative—or at least inspire innovation.
Manuel Demetz
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From Communication Comes New Culture The new (innovation) requires a corresponding (organisational) culture to come about in the first place and to make headway. This should make it possible for the idea to grow in a stable process of innovation into a product that is ripe for the market. Then the culture has to ensure that the consumer recognises the idea and believes in it.
GROWTH, INNOVATION OR FORMATION? A growth-oriented society can develop without glorifying a collective ideology, but it cannot do without ideologically inspired keywords. ‘Innovation’ and ‘growth’ are words whose specific significance is adapted to the context in which they are used. Although ‘growth’ originally had a biological meaning, it is also associated with negative connotations such as ‘exploitation’ and ‘the law of the jungle’. In many discussions, the word ‘growth’ is difficult to combine in a single sentence with climate-friendly measures. Yet people do not want to continue to grow in the manner that has been common up to now.
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Determining the Playing Field Identity, brand and visual manifestation serve as a set of instruments in the realm of communication for transferring what is learnt from the debate to a broader group of people. The target group—the individual, the organisation, society—has learnt in its communication to anticipate the function of identity, brand and manifestation. Latitude is also created for the social phenomenon of ‘innovation’ to take shape. For the process of innovation and the communication surrounding it, this means that the target group must be addressed in terms that it understands and relates to. The logic of revised business models is offered to the consumer in the form of transforming experiences in a traditional context. Two issues come to the fore here: communicating and initiating the innovation process within the company and, corresponding to this, achieving social awareness.