"Creative universities?" Organization and innovation after 2008

The paper supposes that the primary force for economic growth is innovation, which is the social application of the power of creation. Economies and societies that cannot innovate will struggle and flounder. That said, though, innovation is very difficult to achieve. Much or even most of it is phony and ersatz in nature. Newness is a shallow, frequently misleading, indicator of innovation. This is doubly true of the post-2008 era. 2008 was not just a time of global financial crisis. It was also a symptom of flattening global innovation. It has become very apparent that the 'knowledge society' and 'the information society' have stopped innovating and that the promised 'bio technology revolution' didn't happen. The paper looks at the role of organization in the failure of contemporary innovation. Since the 1920s societies entered the organization age. Large and medium size organizations dominate the social landscape. Yet they are generally poor innovators. Small informal enterprises and milieu are much better at substantive innovation. Nonetheless organizations tout innovation. Yet what they call innovation is mostly a mix of self-serving ideology and rhetoric. The paper looks at the last two decades and at the rhetoric of innovation deployed by bureaucratic organizations. The effect of this rhetoric has been perverse. It has hollowed out the creative substance of innovation while appropriating its legitimating properties. Arthritic organizations habitually proclaim newness at the drop of a hat. That irony is underpinned by a larger, long-term social tension between bureaucratic capitalism and creative capitalism. In the post-2008 period, that tension has come back into dramatic focus. The paper asks "where do we go from here?" What kind of organizations or alternatives to organizations can help restart the stalled engine of creation and re-engage yet another long cycle of creative capitalism