Innovation? Change? Transition!

Column Kees Groeneveld, FHI e-totaal Writing a column always involves playing with words to a certain extent. When certain words come into vogue and are 'hyped', it usually says something about the spirit of the times. In 1980, during the first major recession after World War II, after the extremely happy 1960s, the word "innovation" suddenly became fashionable. In the Netherlands this was mainly due to the Wagner Commission. After his career as president of Shell, Gerrit Wagner headed an advisory committee for government policy. His report was entitled 'A new industrial impetus' and the major innovation it proposed was to decouple the development of wages from that of benefits. There was swearing in the left-wing church of Den Uyl. A few years later, Lubbers created a beautiful 'no-nonsense' decoration with it. For years we have cherished the word innovation. A successfully applied innovation, that was the definition and everyone wanted that, all the time, especially after Bill Gates demonstrated it by making an operating system that he purchased available to IBM on a license basis. Grow quickly and become rich, see the association with innovation. It also became the magic word against stagnation. At some point such a word becomes worn out. Especially when people started talking about 'social innovation', perhaps because the alphas were jealous of the success of the betas with their technological innovation. Ten years ago now, Barack Obama made the word 'change' fashionable. It now turned out to be a synonym for innovation. Much of what was presented as innovation was no longer change. Often it really works when everything is locked down, when rigidity occurs. Then every change helps, even by looking back on the past. And why not? The word that logically follows is 'sustainability'. I have previously called that a synonym for conservatism. I immediately cross the bridge to 'transition'. “A transition is a structural change that is the result of interacting and mutually reinforcing developments in the areas of, for example, economy, culture, technology, institutions and nature and the environment.” It's a nice Wikipedia definition. Clearly not a 'revolution'. That word does not fit well with the word 'developments'. But it is still about change. The biotransition, that is probably the most hyped application of the word in our time... That is actually very nice. Apparently we are reasonably aware that our society has become so complex that innovation and change cannot simply be arranged overnight, certainly not structurally. That's our time. Unprecedented complexity of the coherence of things and even of people, peoples, countries, that characterizes our years. Within such complexity, developments occur gradually, even, or perhaps especially, when we say “how fast these changes are.” We are once again in a paradox, an apparent contradiction. Changes happen gradually. We would like the biotransition to happen much faster, but now that it is happening slowly, that slowness may avoid a catastrophe that would occur if our ideas turn out to be wrong. It is actually striking how quickly we have become accustomed to 'zero' growth, which Wagner condemned. Used to zero percent interest, even negative interest. We continue to bathe in luxury and opulence. In the meantime, 'disruption' is becoming the hype word. We're doing so well that it's almost more about the thrill than anything else. Although, we have to keep moving. After all, aging and stiffening are taking hold. And the transition movement can no longer be stopped. Peoples and tribes from a large part of the world, the south and the east, are moving towards us. That is also a transition, structural, gradual change as a result of interacting, reinforcing developments. You can put words to anything, but that does not mean that you as humanity have control over the future. That's a good thing. Nevertheless, we are all responsible for our individual actions, each in our own place in the transition.