Location:  Australia’s first local multi-site workspace for future focused businesses

Insight: Innovation’s euphemisms

Here some thoughts coming from an ethnographic trip to Richmond, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia. I got there following, as always, tech developers, Tech workers, instigators, sensemakers (as my friend Mara Balestrini like to call them), and how they refer to themselves enthusiasts of IoT. I received an invitation by email to ‘IoT Melbourne #1, 2017’ that was going to happen in  Australia’s first local multi-site workspace for future focused businesses. Actually, the interesting thing had nothing to do with the topic of the event and it has everything to do with the place: the way that the organizers talk about ‘innovation without innovation‘.

The space owners took advantage of the occasion to launch the “startup bootcamp. IoT and Data Tech”  program (which did not yet exist in Australia) to the attendees that they believed were the expected public (developers trying to build their business up). So the first speaker  addressed the public saying that the program carried out the spirit of the place, wich is based on transformation and cooperation to bring  your business forward..and that was the moment when I am realized something was missing in the picture (picture that I am very familiarized with since I have been doing fieldwork on the topic for a while), I did not know at that time what was… but suddenly in my head the words were connected to each other and making sense (sort of)…the speaker did not say the magic words: here is where innovation happens. Instead, he was deflecting the speech to another chain of meanings full of euphemism for innovation: ‘transformation’, ‘make actually something’, ‘break the dome’, ‘…build lasting technology businesses’…

I will explore this deeply and write about it in the working concepts section.

Greetings from Melbourne!