WOSC2020

Change can mean bartering, replacing, transforming, modifying, converting (in a transitive sense), becoming different, changing in appearance or behavior (in a reflexive sense). So, change is related with the concept of doing with something different from the moment in which the implementation has been properly decided, and represents a sign of variation, even if not necessarily of discontinuity. Generally, the concept of change can be linked to changing the characteristics of a system/organisation and/or the way of doing things. In an economics and business framework, the concept can be extended to the mean of updating, correcting, improving the status quo by adapting to the changing environment for any social organisation.

Innovation is one of the possible paths according to which change can take form, and can be described as the possibility of concretizing the creativity through an original process, with the aim to guarantee the satisfaction of changing needs over time.

Creativity can be described as the attitude of a system/organisation to evolution and, therefore, not only a specific cognitive capacity, but a real attitude to change the system by the system itself. As the change implies the ability to propose something new, updated, consistent with the evolving needs, then it can be understood as innovation, because it is connected to something that is perceived as different from the past, advanced in a certain sense, precisely innovative.

This session aims at discussing the above concepts in the cybernetic and complex social systems framework, with a focus on the protean nature of systems with their emerging, unpredictable, dynamic, non-linear evolutionary paths. Actually, according to this perspective, change and innovation in social systems/organisations have been offered more insights also from literature about self-organisation, dissipative structures, coevolution, learning, crisis and catastrophes, highlighting the evolution of a social system in a Popperian logic.