Stagnate or innovate?

Are universities where designers go to die? Sometimes I worry about this, especially when one of my old professors writes to me and says about trading the commercial design pursuits for academic ones: “It’s hard to stay relevant.” But then, the next Sunday, I read this article in the New York Times by Stephen Johnson, which contradicted his assertion, restoring my confidence that returning to the ivory towers (aka, the “fourth quadrant”) was the right decision for me.

First, about the four quadrants of innovation:

First, there is the classic solo entrepreneur, protecting innovations in order to benefit from them financially; then the amateur individual, exploring and inventing for the love of it. Then there are the private corporations collaborating on ideas while simultaneously competing with one another. And then there is what I call the “fourth quadrant”: the space of collaborative, nonproprietary innovation, exemplified in recent years by the Internet and the Web, two groundbreaking innovations not owned by anyone.

Which leads to this:

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that market forces drive innovation, with businesses propelled to new ideas by the promise of financial reward. And yet even in the heyday of industrial and consumer capitalism over the last two centuries, the fourth quadrant turns out to have generated more world-changing ideas than the competitive sphere of the marketplace. Batteries, bifocals, neonatal incubators, birth control pills — all originated either in amateur labs or in academic environments.

Then this:

The fourth quadrant, however, is not locked in a zero-sum conflict with markets. As in the case of GPS, this fourth space creates new platforms, which then support commercial ventures.

And finally:

The Internet is the ultimate example of how fourth-quadrant innovation actually supports market developments: a platform built by a loosely affiliated group of public-sector and university visionaries that has become one of the most powerful engines of wealth creation in modern times.

Why has the fourth quadrant been so innovative, despite the lack of traditional economic rewards? The answer, I believe, has to do with the increased connectivity that comes from these open environments. Ideas are free to flow from mind to mind, and to be refined and modified without complex business development deals or patent lawyers. The incentives for innovation are lower, but so are the barriers.

It also led me to think about relevance and what it really means. What’s relevant in academia may not be relevant in business and vice-versa. But is this really a bad thing? The functions of each environment are completely different. Relevance should be defined differently, being heavily dictated by context. But, when products of the two are combined and synthesized, like the examples mentioned here, relevance is a given. I would also point out that irrelevance and stagnation happens in the business world, too. I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. But let’s not even go there….

The ability to remain relevant (or not) is only limited by the motivation of the individual.