Skip to content

Tag: innovation

Sensemaking: Five principles for applying humanities in business

Somebody recently asked me why I am so interested in linking the humanities to business. Why not concentrate more on societal impact through policy, non-profits, and community engagement? My answer? It is precisely because thinking about humanities and business together is so uncomfortable on both sides of the equation that I believe it needs more attention. “Sensemaking” is a concept that has been widely used to study companies and other organizations from a cultural perspective. According to one source, it refers to “research that is interpretive, social constructionist, processual and phenomenological”. It is interpretation raised to the second power (so…

Comments closed

Of cars and conservation – what museums can teach us about innovation?

If you ever get the chance to visit The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, MI, next to Detroit, you should go. Founded by Henry Ford in the late 1920s, The Henry Ford – as the museum is called for short – is apparently the largest indoor-outdoor museum in the US. Unfortunately, when we went to the museum in mid-March, its outdoor section was still closed, but even the indoor part was impressive on its own – both in size and as a set of exhibitions. To me it brought home the fact that understanding both language and…

Comments closed

Innovation needs humanities

To many people in humanities and social sciences, “innovation” has come to sound like a dirty word. To some, the dirt stems from the word’s vicinity to managerial insistence on quantifiable impact; to others, from its allusions to techno-evolutionism. Some merely dismiss innovation as the latest buzzword. As a buzzword, innovation is trailed by all kinds of myths that are the topic of Scott Berkun’s bestseller, The Myths of Innovation, originally published in 2007. The book is written to a wide audience. but seems particularly targeted to anyone aspiring to become an innovator themselves, as well as to those trying…

Comments closed