Abstract
All truly relevant thinking about innovation presupposes an attitude towards the passing of time and implies an awareness of the state of the threads within the fabric of societies as they existed before they were changed by innovation. Both this attitude and this awareness are based largely on information as digested by the student of innovation over his years as a reflecting individual. On the other hand. and more directly, one can show that information and its links with language also play the role of a necessary condition and ingredient for any mnova tion to come about in specific temporal settings.
These Janus-like aspects of information and time as they are embedded in the innovative processes may be key reasons for the elusive characteristics that technological innovation presently seems to have for policy- and decision-makers.
A sense for the effects of history, not always easily traceable in R & D circles, seems to be indispensable for the creation of fertilising assessments of the evolution, present state and future of innovative process - particularly in an age which takes pride in calling itself the 'information age'.
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