The concept of “innovation” in the European intellectual tradition and Asian socio-cultural practices

• Main Author: Вейчжень Гао
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Publishing House "Grani" 2019-12-01
• Series: Granì
• Subjects: innovative development; modernization; competition; the genesis of the concept of “innovation”; typology of innovations; asian innovative societies; cultural landscape
• Online Access: https://grani.org.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/1451

The article analyzes the origin and genesis of the concept of “innovation” in the framework of the European intellectual tradition. It also examines the features of implementation of this concept into real socio-cultural practice of Asian states. The author came out of the need of innovation concept research taking into account the fact that ones have emerged as the driving forces behind the deep socio-cultural transformations. Innovation is an important agenda item in all the areas of society being becoming synonymous with progress, modernization, success, efficiency, productivity, etc. The article attempts to conceptualize the existing approaches to understanding the concept of “innovation” in the English-speaking socio-humanitarian (as well as socio-philosophical discourse), where the concept of “innovation” has vague semantics in modern conditions. Based on the approaches, proposed by modern foreign authors, the genesis and evolution of the concept of “innovation” were investigated. The modern approaches to its essence and content were analyzed too. The article also succeeded in explicating of the modern approaches to the typology of innovations and the term “social innovation” which derived from “innovation”. The praxeological dimension of the article is provided by the analysis of the features of innovative social development in Asian countries taking into account the fact that this area is the most prominent in terms of successful actualization of social innovation approaches, offering original models of social development against the background of their own socio-cultural landscape. The study was able to demonstrate the transformation of ideas about the essence of the phenomenon of innovation in the European intellectual tradition from the era of Antiquity to the present days. It was demonstrated that the understanding of innovations in scientific theories (socio-philosophical, managerial, economic, political, etc.) has a cluster character and is determined by the historical heritage, regional-cultural features and traditions as evidenced by the experience of innovative Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc.).