Fashion and Innovations
For Schumpeter, what distinguishes innovations from fashion cannot be found in the technical or economic nature or complexity of novelties – the scale is gradual – but in the nature of the social change they initiate and even presume. While a new fashionable design is relatively harmless or trivial, and it disappears from the social scene without trace almost at the very moment it has entered it, Schumpeterian innovations, as a rule, are here to stay. By their presence they make a real difference. This change can be smaller or bigger, more or less permanent, more or less encompassing, but it can always be identified. The mobile phone is an example which comes easily to mind. It is not just another fashionable model of the wired phone. On the contrary, it has dramatically changed our everyday habits of communication, creating totally new social practices. In many countries for example, the cell phone met resistance as an ‘uncivilized’ manner of communication. Now, in its turn, the cell phone has its own regular fashion cycles.
What, then, distinguishes a mere fashionable novelty à la Simmel from a genuinely innovative novelty à la Schumpeter? The technical or purely economic differences will not really do as an explanation. It is not reasonable to look for such differences in relative technical complexity or economic investments demanded. These could vary from case to case among innovations and fashions, even though one could empirically claim that the average Schumpeterian innovation would be more capital- and time-intensive than fashions. However, being an inventor of a new popular fashion or a first-comer among the competing firms in a fashion market can certainly make a big economic difference to the firms concerned. Similarly, the very emergence and establishment of the social system of fashion in any one field of consumption change its social character quite radically through the imperative of eternal change. The main distinction between these two novelties, fashion and innovation, is the real impact they have on people’s social routines or habits and the extent to which they change social practices (see Warde 2005). Despite its novelty, a new fashion does not change any social habits. It leaves everything as it was. The idea of a more or less decisive and radical break with previous cultural traditions and social habits is, on the other hand, built into the very concept of a Schumpeterian innovation. Distinct from fashions, they can be compared to styles. As Ted Polhemus argued, ‘a style isn’t trendy . . . It’s inherently conservative and traditional’ (1994: 13). A new style is a ‘real’ social innovation which changes the lives of those involved.
New social and cultural practices are an essential part of innovation, but they can also ‘invite’ inventions and promote the transformation of inventions into innovations. McMeekin and Southerton (2007), in arguing for the important role of final consumption in the innovation process, emphasize that ‘the process of appropriating goods and services into practices is itself innovative, and as social practices change, “spaces” (or demand, needs and wants) for new innovations emerge’. Kotro and Pantzar, speaking of the cultural landscape of a product, point out the importance of the new cultural meanings and interpretations related to a specific object (2002: 31).
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• Jukka Gronow