CCT 205: Digital Innovation
and Cultural Transformation
Lecture 9: Innovation and Creativity
in the Information Economy
Administrivia
• Next week - test review, handing in of
Learning Journals (paper copies please!)
• No formal readings or lecture (there’s
enough for a test as is…) - test review and
time for (very) last minute project questions
and assistance
Learning Journal #7
• Learning Journal #7 : Paul Tackaberry,
Donna Braggins, Bruno DeGazio and
Anthony Wensley offered four related but
distinct perspectives on IP and copyright which most agrees with you and why?
Information economy
• Switch from raw materials and their
processing to information/services economy
• Changes notable already - including
changes to quantity and nature of work,
employee/employer relations, move to
symbolic and consumption economy,
globalization of work, place and culture
A “mobile sociology”
• “Society” at nation-state level increasing a
tenuous construction - interactions with
global networks and forces the norm
• MNCs have no nation - even when they
should have allegiances (e.g., Halliburton’s
move to Dubai)
Global sociology of work
• “global fluids” - heterogeneous network of
people, information, objects, money, culture
• MNCs reduce loyalty to nations,
communities, individuals to play global
market of people and ideas
• Communities of practice emerge in
professions - shifting patterns of allegiance
as professionals act as free agents
Complex (Chaotic?) Mobility
• “non-linear, large-scale, unpredictable and
partially ungovernable” - self-organized but tightly
coupled system
• Flip side - non-mobility and its effects (e.g.,
disaffected and disenfranchised remain local and
often locally powerful)
• Ironically, system both impervious to influence yet
easily changed with seemingly random chains of
events
• Complexity and chaos - a fine line
Three Jobs of the Future
• Routine Production
• In-Person Services
• Symbolic-Analytical Services
Routine Production
• Foundational work in all sectors- many
routine jobs still exist - examples?
• “traditional” (!) education sufficient
• Basic literacy, simple obedience, loyalty
(even if not mutual)
• But - routine jobs easily automated and/or
sent to cheapest possible location (and
without loyalty, it’s done)
• So…does “traditional” education fail you?
In-Person Services
• “high touch” industries - or at least, “some
touch” industries
• Emphasis on building psychosocial bond
with consumers - even if it’s just an act
• Wide range - anything from Walmart
greeters to very high-margin personal
services - examples?
• What makes one service worth $8/hr,
another worth extraordinarily more so?
Symbolic-Analytical
• Problem-solving, idea construction and
representation, management, coordination
• Tools of trade are abstract, intangible, vague
• Range of intellectual and management positions,
from professors to CEOs to advertising to snake
oil salesmen (assuming there’s a difference…)
• Complexity/chaos dynamic evident here predefined logical path to progress almost as hard
as in-touch services - one person’s excellence is
another’s YAMBA (yet another MBA…)
High Concept/Touch (Pink)
• Previously privileged left-brain talents - increasingly
automated, outsourced (especially to qualified developing
world countries, which are competing well…)
• In age of abundance, marketable services must not just be
functional but appealing - that’s high margin work
• More complicated than following rules - must be able to
manipulate and create them effectively (and arguably, to
mutual benefit?) - creativity vs. simple info processing
• Yet, does involve hard work, loyalty and obedience
consistent with routine production (perhaps more so?)
Information vs. Conceptual
Age Distinctions
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Function
Argumentation
Focus
Logic
Seriousness
Accumulation
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Design
Story
Symphony
Empathy
Play
Meaning
Learning Journal #8
• On pg. 210 of text, there’s a 3*8 table of
potential job titles. Pick the one from each
column that suits you.
• What is the resulting job title? What does
that job look like? Would you want it? If
so, why? If not, why not?
Next Week
• Project presentations and test review
• Hand in learning journals - hard copies
please