In the previous post, we introduced the theme of interactive co-creation. Now, to delve deeper into this subject, we need to recognize the differences between fields of reproduction and fields of creation.
Generally, we live in fields of reproduction, that is, environments configured by paths made to trap and direct flows, as if they were grooves to let things that are yet to come flow through them. In these fields, the new rarely emerges because the roads to the future have already been paved by someone (by some established center) before the interaction. Typically, when we traverse these trails, we repeat the past.
Our institutions across all “sectors” (business, government, and social) have been structured for reproduction, not for innovation. They have been designed as fields in the social network to condition flows, forcing them to follow the same paths.
This is why the idea of innovation has gained so much notoriety, especially in corporate environments, which are spaces of entrapment and conditioning of flows. New ideas indeed struggle to emerge or to be identified as such in these environments, not because there are no creative people there (everyone is creative) but because these people are immersed in environments that are not creative (since they were designed for reproduction and not for creation).
More recently, practices of interactive co-creation have emerged, such as open distributed innovation. It is open, meaning that entry and themes are open (anyone can join to co-create and propose unexpected themes). Its outcome is also open (there is no expected result to be necessarily achieved). Its process is free (there is no methodology or set of steps that people must follow to achieve a predefined goal: only free conversation). Its structure is distributed (in a co-creation field, everyone interacts on equal terms; there are no leaders, teachers, speakers, coordinators, or facilitators: all co-creators are netweavers). And its dynamics are interactive (co-creation does not have participatory procedures, such as coordinated meetings, voting, and the administrated construction of consensus. No one needs to comply with decisions. Everyone is free to interact as they wish).
But what is the goal of all this? Well, the name already says it. Such an effort aims to shape a field of creation. In fact, it is about creating a shelter, a refuge for people to be able to – even if only for brief intervals of time – escape from the fields of reproduction (the Matrix).
To practice interactive co-creation, we must generate a co-creation field – an open, permanent, emergent field of interaction among people who create ideas through mutual pollination generating innovation. As McLuhan (1974) noted, innovation is related to environment, not technology; and, we could add, not even with methodology (which is also a technology) (1). This environment can be a physical and/or virtual place fertile for people to feel free to co-create and for innovation to emerge in the field. In summary, Co-creation is the process by which several people create (or develop) ideas together. Since no one conceives an idea from scratch, every idea is a clone of other ideas (a clone always different because subject to a variational process), every creation is a co-creation in its essence. According to the concept of interactive co-creation (or i-based co-creation as open distributed innovation), all ideas are fruits of interaction (involving cloning or swarming, for example, which are phenomena of interaction). Interactive co-creation (or networked) is unpredictable, intermittent, open, distributed, and, obviously, interactive (which means – and this is not so obvious – non-participatory).
The deeper meaning of this elaboration may be summarized in the following phrase:
“In a kind of invocation of entities still unknown and that we do not control, we rehearse in i-based co-creation a new way of coexistence capable of giving life to the social symbiont we prefigure when we open ourselves to interaction with the other-unpredictable” (2).
After better understanding the characteristics and concepts of fields of reproduction and creation, there is a desire to learn more in practice about how these fields are configured in our reality. Are there practical examples of the application of creation fields? And how can we draw inspiration from creation fields, which are fields of network interaction, to change the fields of reproduction characteristic of more hierarchical environments? Is it possible?
Adapted from FRANCO Augusto (2012) Co-creation Reinventing the concept.
References:
(1) Cf. McLuhan in a public lecture – titled “Living at the Speed of Light” – on February 25, 1974, at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, explaining what he understood by his famous aphorism “the medium is the message”: “It means an environment of services created by an innovation, and the environment of services is what changes people. It is the environment that changes people, not the technology. (McLuhan by McLuhan, by David Staines and Stephanie McLuhan (2003). São Paulo: Ediouro, 2005. Original title: Understanding me: lectures and interviews. http://trick.ly/4ra
(2) FRANCO, Augusto (2011). Fluzz: human life and social coexistence in the highly connected new worlds of the third millennium. São Paulo: Escola-de-Redes, 2011:
http://www.slideshare.net/augustodefranco/fluzz-book-ebook
