Foreword

The author of this book is very familiar with the mysteries of what is probably too easily called (and therefore without careful consideration) "innovation". Teaching management and innovation management after having practiced them1, he is also a philosopher. He was one of the first to speak of responsible innovation in 2009. However, unlike the overwhelming majority of his colleagues in the same discipline who are committed to thinking innovation, particularly to making it more responsible, Xavier Pavie has turned to ancient philosophy. He convincingly reminds us that many philosophical questions, problems and ways of solving them (but more broadly questions of meaning), are the heirs of the period of ostentation of thought in which the philosopher embraced all knowledge. Certainly, with the social division of labor, philosophy itself has become a highly specialized set of debates that evolve without confrontation or cooperation. Yet, as Deleuze or Laruelle, less known and presented here, said, philosophy advances by thinking about problems found outside itself. A lack of interest in the topic is a recent trend, probably arising from specialization.

Ancient thought is also welcome in this book since its main target is the innovator. The author therefore addresses their individual responsibility. Greek philosophers paid particular attention to the search for a good life, which was marked out and perhaps even achieved through exercises described as spiritual. Pavie has also had the pleasure of knowing a major French philosopher, a professor at the Collège de France, who has brought the philosophical spiritual exercises up to date, Pierre Hadot. Contemporaries like Michel Foucault drew from this source and acknowledged their debt to Hadot. Even if many philosophers today are not concerned about consistency, even relative consistency, to be found between what they experience and write, this was inconceivable in antiquity, when one entered philosophy as one enters religion. This tradition of spiritual exercises continues to inspire certain contemporary philosophers.

Xavier Pavie is convinced that it is necessary to rethink, better even, to deconstruct, the teaching of innovation by helping those who will be its primary actors to question themselves, their deep motivations, their practices, to take the risk, not only to innovate, but to resist when necessary the pursuit of certain productions and to always remain alert. However, it must be recognized that innovation processes are efficient and able to integrate new injunctions such as those of responsibility. However, without the flexibility of individual behavioral change, a form of responsiveness, it is naïve to think that only institutional environments, when they promote responsibility, carry this burden on their own as if by magic. Moreover, the problem of choosing the institutions best able to promote this individual responsibility is an issue at the very heart of responsible innovation and its own contradictions.

The philosophy of spiritual exercises has a therapeutic virtue, as Wittgenstein also defended it, anxious to avoid poorly posed problems. This was also the case with Socrates' questions, who tested his interlocutors and led them to acknowledge their ignorance. Nothing is more dangerous than what is believed to be certain and uncertain. Socrates generated amongst people a sufficient discord to question their knowledge and sometimes even whole parts of their understanding of life. We can talk here about conversion. Is this too obvious? Is it not involved in the requirement of deliberation, often required in discourses on democratic innovations and where it is asked to bow before the force of the best argument? Is conversion not a period of authentic inter-individual dialogue?

Pavie goes so far as to hypothesize that the innovator's ego is composed of a multitude of individuals grappling not only with his/her own competing desires, but also with the desires and interests of those who expect innovation to succeed, shareholders, future users and sometimes the first opponents. Conversion is therefore not irrelevant when it comes to orienting oneself in this field of competing desires and knowing how to resist an organization of society totally oriented towards innovation, rarely discussed and indicating the North as the only direction that is worth marching in.

This taste for questioning is not unlike the writing strategy of Jim Dratwa's book (2019) in the same "Innovation and Responsibility" series. Indeed, everyone must take their responsibilities, distinguish between what depends on them and what does not, as Pavie points out, echoing the Stoic adage. In a period that paradoxically combined hyper-responsibility, carried by a few people or increasingly demanding standards, and a dilution of responsibilities, differentiated commitment, in the first person, being essential.

The author's approach is not only to develop innovation and simply call for a new innovator, more philosophical or ethical, who would not question innovation itself in an ontological way. An Academic Director in Singapore and of the iMagination center he created, Pavie is even more radical. Relying on a philosophy, Husserlian phenomenology, which itself is the successor to the Cartesian disruption, he invites us to think innovation in a new way, independent of its ultraliberal and capitalist excesses, turned towards profit alone, while also thinking about the common good. He therefore intends to purge innovation in order to think according to innovation and stop thinking innovation itself. One of his theories is that innovation is paradoxically lagging behind, impeded in its conservative and consensual patterns.

Phenomenology is a valuable resource since it is a new discipline that presents itself as the descriptive study of all the phenomena that are available to the subject's experience. Phenomenology invites us to return to this experience supported by a method of description. Valuing intentionality, it seeks not only to be aware of actions, but to think the very way of thinking about them. This contribution echoes previous works by Gianni (2016), Pellé and Reber (2016), Lenoir (2019), and Maesschalck (2017), defending in different ways a second-order reflexivity, both essential for the contextual interpretation of norms and for confrontation in the event of disagreements. However, this reflexivity is a condition of responsibility, of its effectiveness, so that it is not an ever-larger list of purely formal and declarative evidence required throughout projects.

These derivatives form a complex philosophy, because this philosophy thinks of experience, and are nevertheless made very accessible and relevant to the world of innovation, which is far located from it. Phenomenology and innovation seek to find frames of reference that are no longer dominant and therefore perspectives that others' shoes, or they seek to propose new and original solutions that are not simply a repetition of common and usual practices. It also involves turning some of the evidence around and triggering the emergence of new desires. In this way, Pavie seeks to know if these desires are compatible with what the philosopher of responsibility for a technical civilization, Hans Jonas, described as authentically human, sustainable in an ecosystem where caring for oneself and others emerges as an imperative; in competition with the mere consideration of short-term benefits and for the benefit of an elitist group. He then questions innovation in the light of previous proposals and the comparative consequences, in terms of the objects offered, the services offered and the changes in organizations. This may involve looking at previous solutions in a holistic way, considering what can replace a product, its alternatives, the benefits of new solutions, the difficulties encountered and the organizational issues.

The last philosophical resource from which Xavier Pavie draws to radically question innovation is less well-known while remaining close to the phenomenological topic. The resource is François Laruelle, with whom he is close. The latter sometimes speaks of non-philosophy, sometimes of non-standard philosophy. Pavie corresponds to this philosophy as a non-standard innovation, which contrasts with confidential innovation, full of secrets, unshared developments and hidden enrichment. He prefers a thought that suspends innovation when necessary, and therefore defends a position of non-standard innovation rather than anti-innovation. Indeed, anti-innovators would only reinforce the power of the criticized innovation by condemning its shortcomings when it is its use, its devotion and not its essence that need to be reviewed. To innovate in a non-standard way is then to learn to question the "why" of our action, for the benefit of "what" and by "whom". On this subject, the author is serious. According to him, innovation has generally been defined by Westerners and often illustrated with examples from major North American successes, such as the successes of Silicon Valley in the United States. However, according to him, this is a "formidable demonstration of irresponsibility: exploitation of the weakest for production, rare earths for high-tech products, private data, not to mention that rarely the products placed on the market (are) recyclable."

Pansera and Owen's (2018) and Blagovesta Nikolova's (2019) books are consistent with this kind of concern; the former looks at other cultural areas that offer more sober and alternative innovations, and the latter takes seriously the economic and...