Innovation, Technology and Philosophy

Nabaz T. Khayyat

Introduction It is worth to begin this article with the definition of Knowledge. It will give an insight about the relation between innovation and technology, then between innovation and philosophy. The Knowledge is the outcome of hidden mixing between information, experience and perceptions and the ability to judge. The information is the intermediary of acquisition of Knowledge from different means such as intuition and guess and actual practice. Nonaka, I. (1994) defined the Knowledge as a faith that increases the ability of unity or the entity or effective work. According to this definition, the focus will be on the work or the effective performance and not on discovering the truth. This is what often happens, where we care about what can be done by Knowledge and not define the Knowledge itself. We use the word Knowledge to explain that we own some information and thus we are able to express them. However, there are cases that we have the information but we do not express them. Knowledge can be registered in brain of individual or stored in the documents of the organization or in its products, properties, systems and processes. Despite the availability of too many linguistic and business oriented definitions of Knowledge (Spiegler, I., 2000), we will use the Knowledge on the basis of being the ideas or the understanding shown by a particular entity (individual, firm, society) that are used to take an effective behavior toward achieving the entitys goals. It is necessary to differentiate between Knowledge and Information, although there is no clear identified boundary between the two terms, they are not two sides of the same coin. Information is result from processing data generated in the environment and it increases the acquired Knowledge level. Thus it implies that the Knowledge is higher matter from information as we seek to obtain information in order to increase our Knowledge (Spiegler, I., 2000).

The Knowledge exists in several places such as Knowledge bases, databases, file storage, individual brains, and it dispersed through the society and its organizations. In many cases a manager repeats the work of another manager within a firm because of lack of coordination between the two managers so that the Knowledge is transferred between them. Therefore a firm needs to know what the available resources are and how to manage and use these resources to achieve maximum possible return. It is regrettable that the attentions of most organizations focus on its concrete material resources and leave the Knowledge resources they have without management despite of its importance. Is innovation and creativity due to social or psychological factors? If innovation considered as a human behavior, and if human behavior is a reaction of what surrounds it, does this mean that the process of invention and creativity is due to social conditions? But if members of the same society live in the same conditions, and if innovators are only a few, does this mean that innovation is due to the individual and special psychological characteristics of the innovator that distinguished him from the other members in the society? According to sociologists Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) the innovation and creativity in any form whether it is technological, scientific or philosophical is due to the social conditions experienced by the creator, and the innovation effectiveness will not be able to manifest itself only with social contexts. This is not surprising as the individual according to Durkheim dough in the hands of the society which provides the base to launch the innovation. According to Bekar, Clifford and Lipsey, (2001), innovation will not occur unless permitted by the current status of the science, and innovation arises and growth almost algebraically if the current status of the science allows it, these two statements have been considered as default hypotheses for creativity and innovation. The human will not innovate out of nowhere, but its innovation starts from the given structure at the premise representing by culture context and fertile soil for generating new ideas. If we look at the history of science and technology, we will find that how some innovations have been delayed in occurrence even though it was prepared to emerge from a long time. Also we may notice the similarity of innovations that occurred in the same era but in different places in the world, the German scientist Leibniz for example created the calculus in the same time the
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English scientist Newton has created it. Calculus is a means for calculating the way quantities vary with each other, rather than just the quantities themselves. The bare bones of that idea had been hatching before either Newton or Leibniz was born. But they each wrote a full system of calculus. These innovators did not invent the same knowledge because of the same inspiration, but they invented because the work status has reached an extent in which it made questions and changes necessary. There are not spontaneous generations and there is no inventor without a proper education and better school. Conclusion The creator as a social individual affected by the social needs and the social problems afflicted then trying to find appropriate solutions. Thus every innovation testifies the spiritual and needs of its era. However, saying that the social environment is the sufficient condition for innovation is denial of innovation itself because it makes the innovation inevitable result of social circumstances where all personal and individual initiatives are absent. This is denial and unfairness for all innovators ability and capacity. Mind and logic do not accept such analysis otherwise each member of the society will be able to make innovation. The innovation also due to mental life, the characteristics of strong of observation for some people do not allow them to pass unnoticeable in front of different phenomenon and they try to explain the exotic phenomenon unlike the normal people. Fertile imagination, appropriate judgment and strong memory are some other characteristics of people who do innovate. The images that pass through the innovators imagination will be presented in innovators mind in which he will differentiate between the achievable and the none-achievable images, then will keep the achievable images and through a strong will the ideal can become true in spite of obstacles and difficulties.

References Bekar, Clifford and Lipsey, G. (2004) Science, Institutions and the Industrial Revolution,
Journal of European Economic History, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp: 709-753.

Nonaka, I. (1994) A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation, Organization Science, Vol .5, No. 1, pp: 14-37. Spiegler, I. (2000) Knowledge Management: A New Idea or a Recycled Concept, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol 3, No.1, 1-12.