PART 2 – The Ethical Interstice as a Distributed Innovation and Sustainability Booster

In 2002, Peter Drucker emphasized that “successful innovators use both the right and left sides of their brains. They work out analytically what the innovation has to be to satisfy an opportunity. Then they go out and look at potential users to study their expectations, their values, and their needs.”

“The Discipline of Innovation”

The father of modern management identified seven sources of innovation where potential solutions and attractive opportunity need a leap of imagination. Thus taking advantage of the unexpected, as well as clarify incongruities, and process corporate, market and customer needs, plus analyzing demographic changes as well as changes in perception to holistically encompass the gained knowledge and shape a novel strategy.

He calls this momentum “functional inspiration” and underscores that innovation is real work, and should be managed like any other corporate function.

In the age of frontier technologies, disruptive paradigms and collective intelligences, the moment of the interstice, as described by Daniele Proverbio in Part 1, proves to be a moment of complexities acting as a prelude to the renaissance of corporate social responsibility, technological beneficence and human empowerment.

Intelligently orchestrated at micro, meso and macro levels, it fuels economic performance, supporting sustainability through data, cognitive and human sovereignty.

The outcome of this mix of ethical engineering and corporate strategy should be an opportunity for a tabula rasa : both introspection and outlook where goals should be defined as mentioned by Drucker.

Serve as elements of an ethical code for managers and businessmen; and shaping the ethical rationale of the enterprise itself.

Shifting from traditional Corporate Social Responsibility to merging and emerging Collective Social Responsibility ecosystems by thriving on collective intelligence.

In business terms, we can describe the interstice moment as the moment of all possibles. An open window calling for sustainable, ethical and distributed innovation. The moment where people and ideas converge bridging concepts and collectively shaping values and purpose.

In order to structure and orchestrate this phase or ethical interstice, collective intelligence and systems thinking needs to meet novel management methods and forward-thinking approaches such as decentralized and collective ethics as pioneered by The House of Ethics™.

Since 2021, The House of Ethics™ has been specialized in designing novel frameworks merging ethics, IT and humanities / management. Our collaborative tools are based on the latest finding in management, collective intelligence, ethics and frontier technologies applicable as systemic levers for executives and teams.

The ethical interstice is at the heart of purposeful change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential.

The ethical RESTEL or e-RESTEL framework for shaping distributed innovation and systemic sustainability

Our latest fluid framework, the ethical RESTEL or e-RESTEL (ethical Regulative, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal analysis) leans on the traditional PESTEL analysis. It is a novel collective and systemic framework based on decentralized ethical engineering geared towards distributed innovation and systemic sustainability.

The e-RESTEL is designed to be both used as a strategic and ethical “pulse check” and ecosystem builder for AI-driven companies in search for innovation and sustainability.

Yet not just any kind of innovation. We strive to lead companies towards a 3S Innovation – systemic, sustainable and sovereign.

The e-RESTEL invites to challenge novel perspectives for CSR, Risk Management and Distributed Innovation placing human collective intelligence in its epicenter.

Instead of top-down and shallow must-does, collective ethics engineering works like a managerial skill to be trained and applied throughout the value chain of stakeholders.

It highlights ethical reasoning and transforms systems interactions by translating know-how, industry and field knowledge into skillful, resilient, and beneficial action plans.

Through the e-RESTEL business, executives and staff gain collectively insight into how to boost ethical governance and develop fluid frameworks for sustainable impact on people and environment.

From governing models to modeling governance

In terms of collective intelligence the specific moment of interstice is liberating. It opens the door to fresh, bold and courageous perspectives.

It lifts old mindsets to higher grounds and liberates ethics from the corsage of hard-coded individualistic principles. Like swarm ethics, the frame is not hard-coded but dynamic, and only valid if it collectively aligns with the common purpose.

In the fast-paced age of emerging technologies, an idea proves to be acceptable and applicable if it rapidly passes the threshold of collaborative understanding, and validates the collective vision for distributed innovation.

Thus the modeling of governance towards adaptive and malleable strings of interoperable governance(s) is an imperative for its effectiveness and robustness. Ideally it happens on four levels :

organizational : from top-down to horizontal ;

relational : from individual to interconnectedness ;

systemic : from silo to polysystems ;

and semantic : from functional or syntactic to symbolic or meaning.

The distributed and malleable governance technique relies on adaptive modeling through collective intelligence, and can be implemented like milestones known from agile management.

Fit or unfit, acceptable or unacceptable, beneficial or non-beneficial will be dynamically filtered via Key Indicators pointing to validate or reject or recalibrate a path.

Its effectiveness results from identified filters for each implemental phase. Only then will a governance orchestra be effective and become a booster for both distributed innovation and decentralized sustainability.

And as a catalyst to different thinking and generating novel, inclusive and decentralized perspectives, why not start your workshop by using a basic principle of swarm intelligence and combine it to the power of collective intelligence : start with solutions.

Collectively learn to embed reverse ethical engineering and take advantage of complexities.

Move beyond the splitting duality and generate converging multiplicities. The House of Ethics™ article “From “Ethical Dilemma” to “Ethical Dissonance” in Cyber Physical Times. About the Coexistence of Multiple Conflicting Ethics” could be an opener to adaptive and converging thinking.

Rather than being an obstacle, in moments of interstices, dissonances might become catalysts.