Who or what makes innovation spread? Ten case-studies from Greco-Roman Antiquity and the early modern period address human and non-human agency in innovation. Was Erasmus the ‘superspreader’ of the... Show moreWho or what makes innovation spread? Ten case-studies from Greco-Roman Antiquity and the early modern period address human and non-human agency in innovation. Was Erasmus the ‘superspreader’ of the use of New Ancient Greek? How did a special type of clamp contribute to architectural innovation in Delphi? What agents helped diffuse a new festival culture in the eastern parts of the Roman empire? How did a context of status competition between scholars and poets at the Ptolemaic court help deify a lock of hair? Examples from different societal domains illuminate different types of agency in historical innovation. Show less
The concept of frugal innovation tends to be exclusively related to capitalism and modernity. The authors argue that this is a limited perspective. The chapter explores its paradigmatic role in... Show moreThe concept of frugal innovation tends to be exclusively related to capitalism and modernity. The authors argue that this is a limited perspective. The chapter explores its paradigmatic role in history by focusing on ‘Greco-Roman Antiquity’ (roughly 500 BCE - 500 CE), a period characterized by rapid change and enduring innovations. The concept of anchoring - the effective integration and accommodation of the new in existing conceptual categories for relevant social groups - is introduced to the conceptual toolbox of the study of frugal innovation. With a historical perspective on what innovation entails, it becomes clear that redesigning and ‘good-enough’ solutions are what probably drives innovation and its diffusion throughout history. In fact, therefore, the alternative perspective that needs explanation is not the ‘frugal’ one, but rather the (ahistorical and typically Western) idea that innovation is about linear economic growth enabled by unlimited resources. The present turn to frugal innovation is therefore better understood as a return to frugal innovation. Show less
This chapter explores the situatedness of cognition by comparing three explanatory models of human behaviour: in Sophocles’ Philoctetes (409 BCE), Stanley Milgram’s infamous psychological... Show moreThis chapter explores the situatedness of cognition by comparing three explanatory models of human behaviour: in Sophocles’ Philoctetes (409 BCE), Stanley Milgram’s infamous psychological experiments in Obedience to Authority (1960s/1970s), and in 21st-cent. cognitive linguistics. The explanandum is a rather similar situation: a scenario of conflict between an individual’s moral values and the tasks he has in some way agreed to perform. Each author has a different intellectual framework to understand this (situated metacognition). Sophocles explored the sophistic interest in the tension between Neoptolemus’ natural disposition as the son of Achilles and (rhetorical) argument, persuasion, deceit. For Milgram, the desire to explain how the Holocaust could have happened generated the hypothesis of ‘obedience to authority’. Contemporary ideas about basic motivations and incentives of human behaviour played a large role. Yet, these ideas would have been mutually understandable. In the early 21st century, cognitive linguist Herb Clark reinterpreted the Milgram transcripts in ‘cognitive’ terms, and saw in Milgram’s subjects the normal and deeply ingrained human tendency towards social coordination and collaboration, from which they could not extricate themselves. Clark’s analysis also works in the case of Neoptolemus. However, a further exploration shows that this is not just a story of one-directional intellectual progress. When reconsidering the disobedience that was equally apparent in many of Milgram’s subjects and in Neoptolemus, Sophocles may have more to offer than the others. In fact, then, the three models are not mutually exclusive at all, but they do have differential situated salience. Show less
The concept of frugal innovation tends to be exclusively related to capitalism and modernity. The authors argue that this is a limited perspective. The chapter explores its paradigmatic role in... Show moreThe concept of frugal innovation tends to be exclusively related to capitalism and modernity. The authors argue that this is a limited perspective. The chapter explores its paradigmatic role in history by focusing on ‘Greco-Roman Antiquity’ (roughly 500 BCE - 500 CE), a period characterized by rapid change and enduring innovations. The concept of anchoring - the effective integration and accommodation of the new in existing conceptual categories for relevant social groups - is introduced to the conceptual toolbox of the study of frugal innovation. With a historical perspective on what innovation entails, it becomes clear that redesigning and ‘good-enough’ solutions are what probably drives innovation and its diffusion throughout history. In fact, therefore, the alternative perspective that needs explanation is not the ‘frugal’ one, but rather the (ahistorical and typically Western) idea that innovation is about linear economic growth enabled by unlimited resources. The present turn to frugal innovation is therefore better understood as a return to frugal innovation. Show less
