Innovators are agents of change. They pursue novelty, often in the face of adversity. To succeed, they need to consider the other agents they are surrounded by. And they must embrace their own agency in all its facets in order to maximise the impact they have.
Tag: purpose
The agent’s choice
Next to context, purpose, means, and decision-making, an agent must have one more thing: choice. An agent must have some alternative action mode available, so that its decision can choose the better of two options. In this way, the agent reaches its objective through a succession of decisions, each of which achieves a relative advantage: the outcome of the chosen option is better than the outcome of the rejected option.
The agent’s decision-making
Let's turn to the agent’s inner workings: What happens between those inputs and outputs? This requires some information processing, so that the agent compares the outside world with the agent’s purpose, and then discerns —from that comparison— an appropriate response.
The agent’s purpose
While agency is necessarily agnostic of any purpose, the agent itself cannot exist without a motivation, a mission, an objective, a goal, in order to orient its actions in a meaningful direction. The very essence of 'meaning' solely depends on the presence of a purpose from which the agent can derive the most appropriate next step.
Defining agency
With the 'target list' of natural and artificial agents in mind, and focusing on their common characteristics, I can now propose a working definition of agency. At its core, agency is the ability to act. And that action has certain qualities: it serves some purpose, it has a direction towards some utility. Today, I'll offer a short defining phrase and then unpack its meaning piece by piece.
understanding innovation 