by Suneet Pansare
Do you find that everything appears, feels, and sounds increasingly similar nowadays?
Over the past 5 years, I have noticed an increasing homogeneity in experiences, products, services and events. Whether it is our smartphone devices, city skylines, clothing brands or home interiors, the overwhelming sameness is deafening! It is so deafening that if you try typing "home décor" into Pinterest's search bar, you'll promptly notice the pervasive similarity among designs. Surprisingly, this monotony is evident despite our access to varied perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. The cafes, media, brands, cities, logos, and packaging, not only appear similar but also invoke similar experiences. This levelling off, noted by Alex Murrell in his article titled "The Age of the Average" has been captured in the following images.
Murell attributes the sameness to three reasons. Firstly, rising uncertainty has coerced decision-makers towards making safer choices. Secondly, the pursuit of optimisation and quantification fueled by hyper-capitalism. Lastly, globalisation and the free flow of information across geographies.
So, have we stopped truly innovating?
Not entirely. However, Murell's second reason —the obsession with optimization and quantification, suggests a deeper flaw in our approach. The ruthless pursuit of productivity directs innovators towards a future dominated by forced urgency.
The obsession with optimization and quantification arises from the way economic growth is measured—mainly through productivity. Within the business domain, productivity plays a pivotal role, thereby propagating instantaneity, as the invariable future for corporate innovation.
For instance, e-commerce has evolved to "Quick Commerce" where deliveries that took several business days can now arrive in as little as 15 minutes. Similarly, entertainment has shifted from VHS to binge-watching an entire show on Netflix. Whether it is developing products, boosting sales, optimizing supply chains, or even fostering innovation, the relentless emphasis on productivity and instantaneity produces a reductive future. This reductive nature of innovation often manifests adversely on the consumer. Sadly, the resulting instantaneity in products and services is conducive to profits but not to the human brain.
Why? Let's delve into the intricacies of the human mind.
According to the book Dopamine Nation, our brains maintain an imaginary balance between pain and pleasure. Ideally, this balance should remain at equilibrium.
However, any pleasurable experience triggers the release of dopamine, the 'feel-good' neurochemical, which temporarily disrupts this balance by causing a spike in pleasure. Ideally, the brain should return to equilibrium, but in today's world, we're bombarded with what Lembke terms a "fire hose of dopamine" from sources like sugar, social media, shopping, junk food, gaming, and even the widespread gamification of experiences, sometimes even in mundane services such as payment of electricity bills.
Repeated exposure to these pleasure-inducing stimuli causes our brains to adapt, leading to a tolerance where we require more and more stimuli to achieve the same level of satisfaction. Constant exposure to the stimuli facilitated by instantaneous business innovations exacerbates this imbalance, leading to increasing levels of pain and discomfort.
The relentless pursuit of instant gratification enforced by productivity is creating a significant imbalance in our minds. Signs of this imbalance are evident in the rise of issues like teen depression, addiction, loneliness, and other mental health challenges. This is just one aspect of the broader implications associated with unchecked growth. And let's not forget about the looming danger of climate change, which remains largely unaddressed.
If we persist in prioritizing productivity in our innovation and design processes, we may eventually reach a point where outputs plateau and level off. There's a limit to how quickly vegetables can be delivered from farms to homes and how short Instagram Reels can get.
Is productivity and instantaneity the sole future for innovation?
Realising the limits of instantaneity and understanding that pain is not all bad, I flipped the paradigm to learn from the Degrowth movement.
Degrowth is an economic and social movement that advocates for the intentional reduction of a country's economic growth to achieve ecological sustainability, social well-being, and equity. It challenges the traditional focus on continuous economic growth, proposing instead that societies prioritize environmental health, equitable resource distribution, and improved quality of life over increasing GDP. Degrowth argues that beyond a certain point, further growth does not necessarily increase happiness or overall well-being, as discussed in the pain-pleasure imbalance. While most economists cannot fully evaluate the value of Degrowth, I believe that innovators can draw inspiration from its principles to advance business innovations. Degrowth seeks to maximize happiness, cooperation, and well-being by reducing the consumption of luxury goods and prioritizing environmental stewardship, community welfare, and social service investments. Productivity and instantaneity do not have to represent the exclusive future for innovation, as illustrated in the 2x2 matrix below.
Can the Degrowth movement provide alternatives to a productivity induced future?
Imagine shifting away from valuing speed, and productivity. Picture a future where an Uber-like platform facilitates peer-to-peer food sharing, reducing food waste. Imagine Netflix adopting a release model of limited episodes per week to curb overconsumption. Imagine a society where construction is mandated to follow eco-building approaches, or where repair and maintenance become core services offered by fashion retailers.
In today’s era of AI, technology coupled with productivity only serves to amplify the pervasive sameness in products and services. However, I strongly believe that a great way to break away from this monolithic future of productivity-induced sameness could be by embracing the principles of the Degrowth movement. Rather than prioritizing growth and productivity, we should embrace a strategy of Degrowth and deliberate reflection. This alternative approach to innovation has the potential to broaden the boundaries of creativity, safeguard human cognition from harmful instantaneity and foster uniqueness.
Further Reading about Degrowth
© Suneet Pansare, 2024
Suneet Pansare
Suneet is a Design and Foresight Strategist who operates at the intersection of design strategy and futures, enabling organizations not only to imagine possible futures but also to co-design future-ready solutions, explore new opportunity areas, and navigate uncertainties. With approximately five years of experience, he has collaborated with organizations across multiple industries such as insurance, banking, airlines, hospitality, and energy. Suneet holds a Master’s degree in Design from the MIT Institute of Design and a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester.
Comments