Innovation Is Creative Destruction

In BuildingOnlyUpward the phrase CreativeDestruction is used as an alternative approach in the creation of new and better software.

The term was coined by JosephSchumpeter? as applying to a post-Capitalistic Society, and now we see it used to describe what may be the FourthLife of this wiki. From Patterns, to Extremes, to navel-gazing and now to creative and innovative software development.

Contrary: The term Creative Destruction was indeed coined by JosephSchumpeter. But he wasn't talking about 'post-Capitalism', he was talking about Capitalism.

Schumpeter's point was that creative destruction was the driving force of change in a capitalist society. Cause for concern was that those who are influential in one era would try to maintain their position permanently. They can only accomplish this by blocking any creativity that could 'harm society' by effecting 'destructive' changes. I think that's the gist of it. (Isn't that what we see in the real world?) I think Schumpeter even argued that this outcome was the fatal flaw of dynamic capitalism.

In his academic work Schumpeter modeled the process of innovation and how it changed the economy in the large, and used the term 'creative destruction' as a description of it.

Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. --Albert Einstein (quoted in Rosenberg, p. 56)

Now reference and reality disappear altogether, and even meaning--the signified--is problematized. We are left with that pure and random play of signifiers that we call postmodernism, which no longer produces monumental works of the modernist type but ceaselessly reshuffles the fragments of preexistent texts, the building blocks of older cultural and social production, in some new and heightened bricolage: metabooks which cannibalize other books, metatexts which collate bits of other texts ... -- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1991), p. 96

"Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer."

"Because its function is to put knowledge to work--on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself--it must be organized for constant change. It must be organized for innovation; and innovation, as the Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) said, is creative destruction.

It must be organized for SystematicAbandonment? of the established, the customary, the familiar, the comfortable--whether products, services, and processes, human and social relationships, skills, or organizations themselves." -- PeterDrucker, Post-Capitalist Society, p. 57

"The urge to destroy is a creative urge." -- EmmaGoldman?

So how is destruction creative? Creation precedes destruction not vice-versa.

It would become obvious if you ever attempted to remodel or restore a room, a house, a painting, a program full of directed gotos. In the creation of a new space within or including an old space, one must destroy or remove to make the remodeling within the space possible. Concepts are not bipolar. Actions may be, but concepts rarely are so simple.

It sounds you may be taking liberties with your definition of "destruction." In common use, I don't think most people would equate remodeling a room with destroying it, and certainly not equate modifying a program with destroying it. Removal and destruction are not equivalent. Exaggeration can be useful in trying to illustrate a point, but I am totally missing the point when equating creation and destruction.

They are not equal or opposite, Creative is used as an adjective, not as a noun. It's to bad you miss the point. I believe it is an important and useful concept. Nature is full of examples of Creative Destruction. Perhaps you can get the point there.

There's the entropic notion that creation requires the use of energies that at our scale is the destruction of something else. Also, removal is the destruction. The actual items may not be destructed, but the frame, the situation, the scheme, the environment, the gestalt, the sense of place: are destroyed. Depending on you sensitivity this may or may not matter, but something truly has been destroyed. -- AnonymousDonor

Is refactoring a form of CreativeDestruction? I mean, in order for more beautiful programs and structures, the old ones must die. (AurelianoCalvo)

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