White Spaces Innovation in Sweden - Innovation policy for ... - Vinnova

WHITE SPACES INNOVATION IN SWEDENduction of novelty, to variations never seen before. Such micro-interactions both sustaincollective identity and transform it. This produces the first (spatial) perspective on„emergence‟ where agents interact with each other according to local organising themes(e.g. clusters) that perform the reproduction of the cluster and its transition towardssomething else.Social processes of interaction between entities exploring variety give rise to transitionso emergence is a sign of such transition. This is unlike structuration theory (Giddens,1985) which has no interaction of diverse entities to energise the process. Complexitytheory says much the same as social constructivism in giving capacity for (system)continuity and transition at the same time. Using computer simulations, it seeks tomodel evolution as an internal dynamic expressing identity and variety simultaneously.The system has a life of its own, is less susceptible to outside control by „controllers‟ or„designers‟ and is thus perpetually constructing its own future as a process of continuoustransition.4.3 The Question of Attractors: Higher OrderEmergenceGiven that coherent patterns of order emerge from the self-organisation of interactingagents according to local rules (e.g. a cluster) without a global controller or designer,path dependence itself constitutes an attractor of path dependent interaction. Thismeans that strong path dependence on a particular industry attracts agents to it and repelsor ignores agents that have no cause for interaction with it. Such attractors take anumber of „dynamical‟ (or dynamic) forms dependent upon such parameters as theirenergy-flow, their connection density or „connectivity‟ in the resilience sense of governancelinks, and the diversity or variety of agents (innovative potential, in resilienceterms; Folke, 2006). Some attractors are orderly, being set at a stable or equilibriumpoint. This means they are in a high degree of isolation from one another, as might bethe case in a regional economy with low related variety clusters (including industryforms, such as oligopolies, that are not clusters in the economic geographical sense)thus no impulse to interact. When parameters „go critical,‟ as with a surge or collapse ofenergy, a tension arises between stability and instability. These are attractors that arestable and unstable at the same time or, in complexity terms, „on the edge of chaos,‟meaning capable of change in some significant way. Chaos theory also talks of „strange‟or fractal attractors in this context. This is the point where agents interact and adapt inways that may result in mutation or speciation in the presence of diversity or varietyfrom which novel attractors can emerge. This cannot be predicted in a physics-like way.Thus attractors are forms of path dependencies and strange attractors are pathinterdependenciesfrom far from equilibrium agents or clusters that cannot be predicted.New attractors thus arise from this self-organising process as emergence where stability79