The Dehumanization of Entrepreneurship Matthew Manos B.A., Design Media Arts University of California Los Angeles, 2010 Submitted to the Program in Media Design, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design. January 2011 Thesis Advisors Ben Hooker, lead Shannon Herbert, writing Mike Milley, adjunct Garnet Hertz, adjunct
MFA Thesis Paper by Matthew Manos, Art Center College of Design.
"I believe we are headed towards an era of sameness – an era in which innovation by the human species alone is impossible because all humanly perceivable problems are solved. While, to some, the elimination of problems may seem to be a great success, I find it to be the most pressing dilemma of mankind. Entrepreneurship, the design of new stuff as a result of our innate empathy towards others, is what makes us human. To strip innovation and ingenuity out of the human equation is to strip the very thing that makes us unique as a species."
More here: http://www.diegeticbusiness.wordpress.com
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
The Dehumanization of Entrepreneurship
Matthew Manos
B.A., Design Media Arts
University of California Los Angeles, 2010
Submitted to the Program in Media Design, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts at the Art Center College of Design.
January 2011
Thesis Advisors
Ben Hooker, lead
Shannon Herbert, writing
Mike Milley, adjunct
Garnet Hertz, adjunct
I. Context
"Mainly they were worried about the future, and they would badger us about what's going to
happen to us. Finally, I said: 'Look, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. This is the
century in which you can be proactive about the future; you don't have to be reactive. The whole
idea of having scientists and technology is that those things you can envision and describe can
actually be built.' It was a surprise to them and it worried them." - Alan Kay1
In the 18th Century, just 3 decades prior to the birth of Leland Stanford, Adam Smith defined
“entrepreneur” as a person who acts as an agent in transforming demand into supply. This specific
definition, the concept of an entrepreneur as a supplier of what the customer wants, is in agreement
to many definitions that preceded Smith. However, this was not a philosophy that remained a static
definition of the practice. In his book, The Design of Business, Roger Martin speaks of
entrepreneurship and innovation as a way of seeing the world “not as it is, but as it could be.” The
book goes on to argue that true innovation stems from the exploration of problems that can not
actually be found in history, or proven by data. Perhaps in a more extreme use of language, Erik Reis
offers up another take on the practice defining entrepreneurship as the act of creating something new
under “extreme uncertainty.”2 From juxtaposing the 21st Century definition of the field with the
18th and and early 19th century definitions, it might seem as though entrepreneurship has evolved
from a practice that supplies a demand to a profession that creates demands - from a field of
regurgitation to a practice of innovation. However, I argue, these theories are not honest
representations of the true landscape of contemporary American innovation.
Numbers are a hindrance on history-making. Prescribed methodologies, or the templatization
of innovation, yields expected results. Changing history through the production of cultural shifts, an
ambition at the heart of entrepreneurship, is an act that is far too radical for a quantitative practice.
Entrepreneurs often turn towards numbers to see how coordination or reallocation can be optimized
to provide a great benefit to either corporate or social entities. A quantitative and theoretical stance
1
1 Kay, Alan. “Predicting The Future.” Ecotopia, 20 May 2011. <http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm>.
2 Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (New York: Crown Business, 2011), Cover Jacket
like this is actually crippling to the radical thinking an entrepreneur is capable of, limiting their
ability to innovate that which does not exist and change the way we, as consumers and human
beings, perceive the world around us on both a macro and micro scale. Peter Lunenfeld, a pioneer in
the digital humanities, states that we need to “move from P&L to V&F—profit and loss to vision
and futurity—from ROI to ROV –the Return on Investment to a Return on Vision."3 A shift in
entrepreneurial intention from one that is quantitative to one that is qualitative enables innovators to
lessen their concern around the production of profit, and instead focus efforts toward designing a
future they would like to inhabit. I argue that these kind of values and aspirations were common
amongst 20th century innovations, but has been lost in post-internet entrepreneurial endeavor, a
practice that has suffered from a disability that has crippled the ability to discover new problems to
design solutions for.
"The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in
the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been
done many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area,
but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand... [...] Indeed, entrepreneurs are
a minority among new businesses. They create something new, something different; they change
or transmute values." - Peter Drucker4
Instead of changing or transmuting values, entrepreneurs are focusing energy towards making the
old better, feeding off of that which preceded as opposed to laying groundwork for that to come.
This methodology results in a loss of disruptive tendency within the practice of entrepreneurship.
2
3 Lunenfeld, Peter. “Bespoke Futures: Media Design and the Future of the Future,” Think Tank: Adobe Design Center, 2007. 20 May. 2011 <http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.html>
4 Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper, 1985), 21-22
Brenda Laurel identifies a crisis in contemporary entrepreneurial practice: “We face a crisis in
content - who will make it, how will it be paid for, and what will it be worth in a new media
world?”5 Entrepreneurial practice, and innovation in general, is now driven by the acquisition of
content. It is no longer a form of authorship, but instead of collage. This crisis, in part, can be
attributed to society’s desire for a constant “newness,” but perhaps entrepreneurs have simply run
out of ideas. I believe we are headed towards an era of sameness – an era in which innovation by the
human species alone is impossible because all humanly perceivable problems are solved. While, to
some, the elimination of problems may seem to be a great success, I find it to be the most pressing
dilemma of mankind. As utopian socialist and business man, King Camp Gillette, states, the
progress of humanity is dependent on the birth of ideas, and "if individual minds should cease to
give birth to ideas of improvement or discovery, the progress of man would cease."6
Entrepreneurship, the design of new stuff as a result of our innate empathy towards others, is what
makes us human. To strip innovation and ingenuity out of the human equation is to strip the very
thing that makes us unique as a species.
"Humans are governed by two clocks: the very slow-ticking clock of human evolution and the
fast-accelerating clock of technological progress. The result of these two clocks not synching up is
the human brain (and the public policy our brains generate) is unable to keep up with the
complex environment around us."7 - Rebecca Costa
As Research Scientists in the field of Quantum Physics attempt discovery, breakthrough is revealed
in that which is counterintuitive. For example, 0.999... is equal to 1. In this space, human intuition
becomes irrelevant because the areas explored are not comparable to that of any past experience. The
3
5 Laurel, Brenda. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001. page 93
6 Gillette, King Camp. World Corporation. page 152-153
7 Costa, Rebecca. The Watchman’s Rattle. Quoted by The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. <http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/costa20111119>.