Part I: Innovation

Failure and innovation

Anna-Maria Sichani and Michael Donnay

Digital technologies have historically been embedded in narratives of experimentation, novelty, and innovation that often pair with discourse around risk and failure. While discussions surrounding innovation and newness – whether in technology, culture, or everyday life – often embrace failure as part of the journey toward a successful prototype, they simultaneously embed a narrative of rupture that discards previous modes and paradigms (Christensen 1997). Facebook’s early motto ‘move fast and break things’ evocatively captures this duality (Blodget 2009).

These discourses have become more prominent among research funders and programmes that prioritise experimentation, risk, and novelty are increasingly common, at least in the United Kingdom and European contexts (UK Research and Innovation 2019; Leptin 2024). This move might suggest that humanities disciplines have adopted a culture that is willing to easily accept the failures that will inevitably accompany that approach to research. Yet, as Quinn Dombrowski deftly argues, professional culture in the humanities – even to some extent within the digital humanities – remains highly risk averse. Jane Winters examines some of the reasons this conservative culture persists, including (somewhat ironically) the funding organisation’s own approach to grant evaluation.

Definitions of innovation can shape the work we do in other ways. Christopher Ohge’s reflection asks whether we are well served by an ‘innovation-as-novelty’ paradigm. He argues instead for an approach to innovation that recognises the importance of newness, but orients us towards a research ethic that values doing things well over doing things differently for the sake of it. This theme is picked up in David de Roure’s contribution, which examines the ‘software waste cycle’ that many innovative digital projects fall into. The reformulation of failure as play that de Roure proposes could encourage risk-taking and innovation, while incentivising the reuse of existing tools and methods.

These reflections all acknowledge the importance of innovation in research generally, and digital scholarship particularly, while drawing attention to places where our current model of innovation fails us.

References

Blodget, Henry. ‘Mark Zuckerberg On Innovation’. Business Insider (October 1, 2009) Archived from the original on February 9, 2021. https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-innovation-2009-10?r=US&IR=T

Christensen, Clayton M.  The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. The Management of Innovation and Change Series. Harvard Business School Press, 1997.

Leptin, Maria. ‘Evaluation of Research Proposals: The Why and What of the ERC’s Recent Changes’. European Research Council. 2024. https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2024-02/Evaluation_of_research_proposals.pdf.

UK Research and Innovation Annual Report and Accounts 2018-2019. London: Dandy Booksellers Ltd, 2019.