Language: German
Dates:
- 18.11.2024: 09:00-12:00 and 13:00-16:00
- 25.11.2024: 09:00-12:00 and 13:00-16:00
Digital innovations permeate almost every aspect of our lives and have a profound impact on culture, business and politics. New information procurement systems are giving rise to new learning and educational practices; social media are changing the dynamics of the civic public sphere; cloud infrastructures are enabling new business models. The reading seminar assumes that digital innovation is not just something we encounter empirically in the world; but can provide a methodological and theoretical perspective through which we can better understand and perform our academic work. The aim of the seminar is to make “digital innovation” as such a perspective tangible and usable for the workshop participants on the basis of four different dimensions.
The seminar is based on the idea that the scientific study of digital transformation faces major challenges and would benefit from a holistic perspective. This means putting the research subject and research process as well as the standpoint and practical purpose of one’s own scientific work in relation to the speed, extent, complexity and scope of the digital transformation. The “digital innovation” perspective should sensitise participants to a strategic understanding of their own work and encourage them to design and carry out their research programme with a view to sufficiently relevant, far-reaching and concrete actionable knowledge.
The reading seminar is an introduction. It refers to various topics and is based on literature from different disciplines such as organisational research, design research, innovation research, science and technology research. The seminar comprises two full days; three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon (9-12 and 13-16). For each session, all participants must read a text in preparation; for each text, selected participants must prepare a thesis paper. In each session, a person with expertise is also invited to give an input and then join in the discussion. At the end of the reading seminar, participants are asked to formulate a structured essay in which at least two of the four dimensions discussed are related to their own work; in addition, participants are asked to give feedback on the essay of another participant.
Session 1: Exploring digital innovation. This session is based on the assumption that researching digital transformation requires new epistemic and methodological approaches. In particular, this means that research into the effects of digital technologies can no longer simply be separated from research into their genesis, but that both research perspectives must be actively interrelated in the planning and execution of scientific research. This has implications for the choice of empirical field and cases as well as the research method and research approach. In addition, this integrated methodological approach also has an influence on which findings are achieved and how these are explicated through theorising and linked to other findings and problems. This session aims to make this approach understandable and usable for your own research work through the perspective of “digital innovation”.
Session 2: Criticising digital innovation. This session assumes that the digital transformation must be subjected to a critical examination that goes beyond revealing the effects of this transformation in various areas such as culture, labour, business or politics. Accordingly, there is a need for a critique of digital innovation as such, i.e. its economic, ecological, cultural and ultimately ideological conditions. This session is intended to raise awareness of the fact that digital innovation must be understood as a vehicle of depoliticisation and repoliticisation or as a form of political negotiation. It is also intended to sensitise participants to how technological neutrality and determinism are reproduced in impact-oriented research and downstream in policy discourse if the social conditions of digital innovations are not sufficiently reflected upon.
Session 3: Designing digital innovation. This session assumes that a comprehensive understanding of digital transformation must necessarily include a design perspective. Accordingly, understanding the work and mindset of designers of socio-technical systems and objects can significantly improve research into this transformation. The aim is not only to better understand how the design of such systems and objects anticipates certain needs and expectations and reduces lifeworld complexities to certain affordances, but also to understand that design processes take place in political and economic contexts that have a major influence on the shape of these systems and objects. This session is also intended to raise awareness of the fact that the design of digital innovation is a fundamentally open-ended process in which users are involved in the further development of the systems and objects they use. In addition, the session aims to develop an understanding of the fact that design processes are always driven by experts who inscribe their ideas of the world into the systems and objects they design, and that research into digital transformation thus represents a fundamentally interdisciplinary examination of scientific theories that are embodied in technical artefacts.
Session 4 Regulating digital innovation. This session assumes that the digital transformation poses fundamental challenges to the regulation of technology and economics and that new theories and practices of regulation are required. These challenges become particularly clear from the perspective of digital innovation. Traditional regulatory approaches that rely on prohibitions and requirements are increasingly being combined and in some cases replaced by approaches that focus on innovation. This session will look at the background and causes of this paradigm shift. It aims to raise awareness of the fact that digital innovation is fundamentally open-ended and difficult to predict, is non-linear and arises from complexity, is only partially compatible with traditional notions of law and national borders and requires new forms of cooperation between state authorities, companies and civil engagement.
Sebastian Koth
Sebastian Koth is a research associate in the “Reorganisation of Knowledge Practices” group at the Weizenbaum Institute. He is currently investigating how artificial intelligence and distributed ledgers are changing the practice and organisation of science. He works at the interface of science, innovation and technology research as well as organisational research and economic sociology.
Rainer Rehak
Rainer Rehak is a research associate in the “Digitalisation, Sustainability and Participation” group at the Weizenbaum Institute. His fields of research are data protection, IT security, state hacking, computer science and ethics, technology fictions, digitalisation and sustainability, convivial and democratic digital technology and the implications and limits of automation through AI systems.