Prejudice and Innovation: A Critical Relation for Designing Potentially Innovative Solutions

Abstract

Contemporary organizations are increasingly interested in augmenting their capacity to innovate. The most commonly adopted frameworks for innovation among corporations are the ones based on co-creation processes, particularly the ones related to the “design thinking” practices (i.e, human-centered design, open innovation, service design, lean startup and business model generation). These frameworks have fundamentally in common the assumption that people are sensible enough to understand different points of view. And that these frames of work will enable organizational teams to free themselves of their prejudices and embrace the “different.” At the same time that a team’s prejudice can distort understandings, it also plays an important role in opening up what it is to be understood. This text advocates that by being aware of the impacts of prejudice, tradition and the interplays between pre-understandings and understandings, organizational teams should have better possibilities to innovate, i.e. to create new propositions that will be perceived as valuable by a determined social context. A metaframework and future research are proposed.

Keywords: Hermeneutic, tradition, prejudice, knowledge, sharing, future, innovation, organization.

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100261