Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Re-inventing invention: new tendencies in capitalist commodification

[May 2006 - Economy and Society - By Nigel Thrift, Oxford] This paper argues that a shift is taking place in the fabric of capitalism as a  result of a change in how the business of invention is understood. Using theoretical approaches that rely on the notion that capitalism  increasingly tries to draw in the whole intellect, in the first part of the paper I argue that the new understanding of innovation currently shows up as three associated developments: as the mobilization of forethought, as the deepening of the lure of the commodity through the co-creation of commodities with consumers, and as the construction of different kinds of apparently more innovative space suffused with information technology. The second part of the paper then argues that these disclosures are leading to new forms of value, based on generating moments of rightness. There is a brief conclusion. More (PDF)

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