Abstract

This article focuses on what I comprehend as the inherent dilemma in the tension between innovation and adaptation, as articulated in the policy documents of the emerging knowledge economy. In the first section, I delineate a horizon of understanding for my presentation by defining the societal transformations in the historical context in which the question of innovation has arisen. Then, in the second section, I elaborate on a diagnosis of the new and predominant flexible organization of knowledge.In the last two sections, I introduce hermeneutical perspectives into the discussion by a close reading of one of Paul Ricoeur’s major works from the mid 1970s, here interpreted as a profound investigation into the micro mechanisms of the epistemology of creativity. Thus, revealing the ontological implications of innovation as well as the anthropological prerequisites of a creativity with a “human face.”