Integral Research and Societal Regeneration in Africa

1.1.2. Beyond the Innovation Buzzword: Process, Substance, Form and Context

Innovation is the “buzzword of our day”. Each business is concerned with it and claims that it will soon be “out of the market” if it loses its power to innovate. Entire societies, governments and political parties nail their colours to the innovation mast, altogether promoting “economic growth”, and thereby claiming to be doing everything to promote such. They thereby commit themselves to developing a legal, financial, educational and communicational infrastructure to promote such (implied technological) innovation, with businesses inevitably expected to take the “innovative” lead. Governments, however, and indeed people in general, have little understanding of what “social”, as distinct from conventional technological innovation, might actually mean, more especially when lodged in a particular community or society, be it, for example, in Buhera or Benin.

As such, and more especially, such research and innovation is now specifically contextualised within, and thereby born out of, a particular natural and cultural context, specifically for us here, one in Africa and its diaspora. This then is the primary issue, through firstly our process of integral research-and-innovation, secondly by way of substance, within the integral realms of nature, culture, social science and technology, polity and economy, thirdly the inter-institutional form in which such needs to be lodged, that of a so-called Communiversity, and finally, by way of context, explicitly within Africa and its Diaspora. Process, substance, form and context then need to be integrally co-evolved for social innovation to occur.

As we have said then, the term innovation is invariably used to represent “technical and technological innovation”. It reflects advancement in core industries (from automotive to communications, from information technology to chemistry and biotechnology, from solar energy to medical products, from the financial industry to logistics, from airline to space technology, and now, most notably, from desktop computing to the new social media). Billions of dollars are pumped into research and development to enable technological innovation to take place in those sectors. Of course, all this is very important. But, while parts of the world have become highly innovative in technological terms, what we term “social innovation” lags way, way behind, which is why, for us, Ukraine and Russia, Palestine and Israel, Yemen and Sudan – the list is endless – are all on fire!

For us, such “innovation” in a particular society accompanied by a communiversity and communitalism, and ultimately the healing wisdom of Africa, as we shall see, in Africa or its Diaspora, if not world-wide, is comprised of:

• – a local communal grounding and origination/learning community and Nhaka-economy supported by Community Building (nor marketing);
• – a local-global trans-cultural, emergent foundation/transformation journey and Yurugu-economy, supported by Conscious Evolution (not HR); thereafter
• – a “newly global”, emancipatory, scientific navigation/research academy and economics of love supported by Knowledge Creation (not operations), and
• – global-local transformative economic effect/Communitalism supported by Sustainable Development (not finance).

Such altogether then constitutes “social” innovation. Moreover, in specifically Re-GENE-rative integral research terms, we ground such innovation in original research “method”, emerge foundationally through a research “methodology”, navigate in emancipatory guise via research critique, and effect innovation transformatively through “action” research, altogether and in turn, on one or other research path.

So, alongside these technological advances, socially bereft of the above, the world generally and Africa specifically suffers increasingly from the downsides of such technological, and now also financial, innovation, without social innovation to counteract it. Moreover, in Africa, being generally “relational” in our “southern” research orientation, social innovation should occupy pride of place. Altogether though we are faced with environmental destruction and economic crises, all too often serving to increase the gaps between the rich and the poor, while at the same time, crazy as it seems, there is more and more work that needs to be done while unemployment – people thereby being “out of work” – proliferates.

As materialism advances, there is an increasing sense of unrest, insecurity and lack of rootedness, psychologically and spiritually. Then, we turn again to economics and technology to find the solutions to such problems. We want our industries to become more environmentally friendly; we want our pharmaceutical companies and globally initiated health initiatives to solve our health problems, we want technology to be developed to resolve the digital divide, we want trade and growth to create wealth for all-comers, and so on, and so on.

Therefore, we of the “west” and the “north”, whether within industrialised societies or without, believe that once the poor countries have developed economies, with technology thereby playing a major part, many of the current problems will be solved automatically, and Africa will be “rising”, just was we did in the “west” and indeed parts now of the “east”. But of course this is not taking place, in African societies as a whole (all too often only the elites are rising), because there is no social innovation, albeit that in Africa and its Diaspora, for example, thousands and thousands of students are conducting “research”. Where are we going wrong?

1.1.3. Beyond Technology

Our claim, therefore, is not that we should abandon technological innovation but that we are seeing such innovation in far too one-dimensional terms, with AI today being at the top of the technical list. There is more to life and work than technological and economic innovation. There is social, including ecological and cultural, innovation, and in our integral enterprises, as we shall see in the African case stories that follow, we demonstrate why social innovation is equally important and how it can be achieved structurally through institutionalising such and functionally by evolving social research, re-GENE-relatively, accordingly. Such a newly regenerative approach towards research, moreover, needs to be purposefully lodged in specific natural and cultural soils, thereby intimately connected with the social sciences generally, as well as the humanities in particular, in the process of addressing burning issues and drawing on particular gifts/capacities. Structurally speaking, as we shall see, a Centre for Integral Research and Societal Re-GENE-ration is being co-evolved, therefore, at the heart of, or networked alongside, learning communities, transformation journeys, and socio-economic laboratories to build purposefully on Africa’s healing wisdom.

Indeed, one of us, Anselm Adodo as we shall see, promoted such learning communities amongst his local farmers, and has developed transformation journeys by way of a Masters in Transformation Studies for individuals and communities in Nigeria, and has founded Pax Herbals (Adodo2017) as a socio-economic laboratory, in fact a leading such example of deploying healing wisdom, naturally and economically, in the whole of Africa.

The other one of us, Ronnie Lessem, together with his former partner at Trans4m, Alexander Schieffer, developed the overall approach to Integral Research and Innovation (Lessem and Schieffer 2010), alongside Integral Economics (Lessem and Schieffer 2010) and Transformation Management (Lessem and Schieffer (2009), upon which our work was initially based. Together moreover, Ronnie, Anselm, and Tony Bradley (2019, have developed The Idea of the Communiversity and also Afrikology (Adodo and Lessem, 2021), each in turn, altogether paving the way, also now with Sandile Ndlungwane in South Africa, for a Centre for Integral Research and Innovation in Africa So why, overall, and more specifically, are we embarking on this ambitious journey?

1.2.1. Enterprise and University Bereft of Humanity

When we ask many of our business or academic colleagues how they are advancing thelot of mankind generally, or indeed Africa and its diaspora, specifically, through their commercial activities, on the one business hand, or their “research” papers or indeed degree courses, on the academic other, we usually we get incredulous looks. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but such are few and far between. After all, individual students are wrapped up in their formal studies, individual researchers with their academic papers, and individual practitioners with their business priorities, rather than building learning or, indeed, knowledge-creating communities rather than engaging in deeply rooted and broadly based transformation journeys.

Moreover, when we ask colleagues in the corporate world how their research is contributing to resolving our pensions crisis, social injustice, human poverty around the globe, or, more recently, the global financial crisis, we get similarly blank looks though as an exception, some may now be concerned with the problem of world climate change, albeit as part of their corporate remit. On the one hand, then, “that’s all very well”, the academics say, “our students just want to get a degree”, or “I have a PhD to complete”. On the other hand, for business or management practitioners, “I have targets to meet”, “it’s up to the government or you people at the universities to solve the world’s problems, not us”. Indeed, the business of marketing, operations, finance, or indeed of HR has little to do with community building or even knowledge creation, never mind with healing society!

The prospect that business or academe, of course alongside the public and civic sectors, may be advancing the lot of mankind, purposefully through social – alongside technological – innovations, is therefore seldom considered. When it is, moreover, such social “innovation” is conceived of in terms of the development of some new product or service, whereby such “development” has nothing to do with formalised research in sociology or psychology, philosophy or geography, ecology or anthropology. Imagine a technological innovator who does not delve into physics or chemistry, biology or ecology, bioengineering or biotechnology. In fact, and in the course of the 2008 financial crisis, it is amazing that nobody seemed to look towards the universities or research institutes as either a source of the problem or as the source of its solution.

Thought and action, most especially that of a radical, transformative nature, at least in the social and economic arena, especially lodged within a particular society’s natural and cultural context, seldom institutionally meet. More so, for us, and especially in parts of the world or a world, which are supposedly “lagging behind”, the university, as it currently stands, together with others, is failing to play its part in regenerating a society. Indeed, while in the natural sciences, industry and academia, most especially with “high tech” oriented “science parks”, combine forces prolifically, in the social sciences, no such equivalent exists. It is for that very reason what we are crying out for a “high touch”, as opposed to high tech, communiversity!

In Figure 1.2. below we sketch this out, to feed, perhaps, our imagination, if not also to enhance our powers of research and analysis, as well as ultimately, and specifically, social innovation. We now turn, specifically, to academically, and indeed practically, based social research, and will build up our social innovation process, Communion form, communitalism-like healing substance, and African context integrally from there.

1.3.1. First Wake-Up Call: Social Research Devoid of Innovation