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Unrau, Mike

University of British Columbia

This manuscript-style dissertation assists to fill the gap in the social innovation literature of social intervention methods that account for worldview bias and the nonlinear dynamical processes of social systems innovation. I investigate a critical consciousness approach to worldview bias and link the result to a nonlinear dynamical approach to creativity in systems transformation so that social innovators may uncover novel transitions in systems dynamics and generate creative solution spaces for beneficial change. The dissertation results in a transdisciplinary theoretical framework for “systemic-dynamic creativity” and four publishable manuscripts on key topics that help guide changemakers in an internal and external reflexive process on social innovation. In the first manuscript I investigate an “internal” approach to Freire’s critical consciousness and how it relates to a complex systems approach to creative consciousness. I show that by making novel distinctions between static and dynamic worldviews, social innovators may become mindfully aware and transform internal bias. In the next manuscript, I move to an “external” approach and examine nonlinear dynamical systems theory to identify the “birthplace” of creativity as it arises applies to multiple systems. I produce a novelty assessment that can aid changemakers in finding “transition points” for systemic innovation, and offer four preconditions to novelty to leverage such points in a Meadows-like intervention toward systemic change. In the third manuscript, I take this nonlinear understanding, apply it to social systems, and find that Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” resembles entropic processes of disordering also found in collective worldviews. I show that the oppositional “negentropic” processes may transform social complexities toward the ordering of creative solutions. Such “internal” and “external” approaches to social change are then synthesized in the fourth manuscript, where I build upon other social innovation methodologies (e.g., Checkland’s soft systems methodology and “social labs”) to generate a method informed by nonlinear dynamics and worldview bias considerations for social innovation intervention. The four publishable manuscripts contribute to scholarship on creativity and social innovation by offering a conception of “creative critical consciousness,” a low-recurrence approach to novelty generation, and a practical social innovation method for changemakers to use when addressing complex social systems challenges.

Text

2022-12-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80469

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/