Cutting at the edge: observations on innovation beyond the urban

Innovation is generally associated with the creation of something new and with economic growth, and is often understood in relation to modernity and its prime social site, 'the city'. Accordingly, the coupling of innovation and rural areas may seem incongruent. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israel's high-tech scene, we analyse innovation centres located primarily in kibbutzim in the northern and southern regions of the country. This allows us to juxtapose the ultra-modernist and individualist ethos of the creative actor against a more communal understanding of social life. In these sites, we observe not just the imitation of 'urban' innovation, but also the strong influence of the community and the contribution of local knowledge in the design of technologically innovative products and services. Examining what is taking place outside urban centres thus enables a more complete and nuanced understanding of the interplay between innovation and society at large.

Cutting at the edge: observations on innovation beyond the urban L imor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem Hebrew University of Jerusalem Innovation is generally associated with the creation of something new and with economic growth, and is often understood in relation to modernity and its prime social site, ‘the city’. Accordingly, the coupling of innovation and rural areas may seem incongruent. Drawing on ethnographic research on Israel’s high-tech scene, we analyse innovation centres located primarily in kibbutzim in the northern and southern regions of the country. This allows us to juxtapose the ultra-modernist and individualist ethos of the creative actor against a more communal understanding of social life. In these sites, we observe not just the imitation of ‘urban’ innovation, but also the strong inﬂuence of the community and the contribution of local knowledge in the design of technologically innovative products and services. Examining what is taking place outside urban centres thus enables a more complete and nuanced understanding of the interplay between innovation and society at large. During one of our visits to various high-tech innovation centres in rural Israel, we were joined by a middle-aged farmer dressed in his work clothes. One of the centre’s managers escorted the farmer into a large conference room, where they joined a video conference. Delighted to witness such a live demonstration of the centre’s activity, we were told this farmer had invented a method for transforming fresh basil into a spread and was in the process of registering a patent and securing investment. Expecting to learn about the cutting edge of aqua- and agro-tech, we had been given a glimpse of the future of pesto: a first-hand experience with the fact that innovation is socially relative. As we learned later, this centre and others like it were engaged in the development of some of today’s state-of-the-art technologies. In this article, however, we adopt no normative standpoints regarding how innovation might best be achieved or its outcome measured, nor do we seek to determine whether something is indeed innovative. Instead, we are interested in innovation as a sociocultural object and research concept. Rural innovation centres are a productive site in which to pursue this interest precisely because of the counter-intuitiveness of such an approach. Studies of innovation often show a bias towards examining innovation in urban areas. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. management literature, oriented towards the identification of optimal conditions for the fostering of innovation, emphasizes the spatial concentration of different actors (e.g. firms and entrepreneurs: see Cooke 2001; B.J. Katz & Wagner 2014; Porter 1998). While they may approach the subject from a more critical perspective, anthropologists have followed a similar trend and analyse the social practices of innovation in a way that ties such practices to the city and reflects the sociohistorical association between ‘the city’ and modernity (Moeran 2014; Welz 2003; Wilf 2019). In recent years, however, the sites in which innovation takes place have been changing, and this calls for the development of suitable analysis and concepts. The tech industry in particular has seen an ongoing process of migration from the metropolises to the countryside (Farivar 2021). In the case of Israel, the focus of the present study, this has involved moving from the country’s central ultra-modernist-urban cities to rural settlements (particularly kibbutzim) and their surrounding areas (see below for further explanation of the use of the term rural in this regard). Despite notable transformations in recent decades, the kibbutzim (plural form of the singular kibbutz) have a long history of vibrant communal life, an ethos quite different from that of the modern city. Intrigued by the contrast between these two types of social and geographical locations, we therefore sought to examine the distinct characteristics of these sites of innovation. What does innovation mean and look like in these rural areas? And how might an examination of innovation in these locations contribute to the theory and analysis of innovation in general? Throughout 2020-1, we conducted a long-term ethnographic study of future innovation in the Israeli high-tech sector. One of our interesting findings was regarding the development of innovation centres in more rural loci of the country. In this article, we specifically focus on four such sites located in the country’s northern and southern districts. As part of our research, we visited each centre and engaged in dozens of in-depth interviews and informal conversations. Our informants primarily consisted of the centres’ managers and senior workers of tech companies based in these centres. Additionally, we approached officials from the relevant local authorities to gain their perspective on this innovation activity, and their particular involvement in the establishment of these initiatives. Finally, we reviewed written and visual materials produced by the centres, which aided in unpacking the aesthetics and rationale involved in these projects. As we came to learn, each centre has a unique origin story, and such centres may be owned by for-profit companies, by the local regional municipality, or by a local economic consortium. Despite these differences, we identified notable similarities during our fieldwork. The centres operate as accelerators or incubators for local or extra-local high-tech innovative initiatives and assist them to attract investors and apply for potential grants. They provide a shared working space for the use of the community and often conduct programmes aimed at exposing local audiences to recent trends in the world of technology. Finally, in some cases, the centres also perform a function similar to that of a venture fund investing in the development of local innovation. Through our observations and analysis, we identified three main characteristics associated with the generation of innovation in these rural high-tech environments. First, the sociotechnical imaginaries of innovation are ‘imported’ through imitation of the design and work cultures found in urban innovation centres. Second, the preexisting communal ethos of rural communities is utilized to provide a supporting Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 2 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem professional and personal network for entrepreneurship and creativity. Significantly, in these locations, the community itself becomes a breeding ground for innovation in ways that go beyond the notion of peer networks or the internal design of an organization’s workplace. Rather than being merely an individualist attempt to invent the next, brightest idea, innovation comes to take on another meaning: of care for the community, by the community. Third, links are established between the distinct characteristics of these rural areas and processes of innovation, whereby local industries and knowledge are involved and incorporated into the design of technologically innovative products and services.1 Thus, we observed a unique connection between these rural regions, innovation processes, and communities, and therefore between localism, communality, and innovation. Conceptual cornerstones: creativity, innovation, and modernity ‘Creativity’ and ‘innovation’ often give the impression of being closed terms and have sometimes been used synonymously in the anthropological literature (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020; Liep 2001; Moeran & Christensen 2013). The former, however, has been the subject of much consideration, whereas the latter has remained relatively marginalized. This has become increasingly notable in the light of the predominance of the concept of innovation within contemporary discourse and large parts of the social sciences. In this article, however, we do not focus on the distinction between the two terms; instead, we draw on the literature on both to suggest a new analytical framework that identifies multiple possible forms of innovation. According to the classic anthropological approach, creativity relies on the social environment in which it unfolds. A century ago, Edward Sapir conveyed this point, arguing that creativity is ‘not a manufacture of form ex nihilo’ (1924: 418). Rather, creation is based on available cultural possibilities, such as traditions, cultural heritage, and shared mental images (Lohmann 2010). Understood in this way, creativity is the range of ‘human activities that transform existing cultural practices’ (Rosaldo, Lavie & Narayan 1993: 5), a transformation also described as a ‘play with form’ (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020: 3).2 Moreover, like other ‘cultural facts’, creativity is contextual and hence comes about through social recognition. To ‘move the world’, creativity should be familiar (Liep 2001: 1): the audience identifies it as such via references to pre-existing ideas (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020). These observations inform us that creativity is in the eye of the observer and is relative, not absolute. Other anthropologists have exposed the systematic institutionalization of creativity. Problematizing the romantic notion of creative capabilities that dominates Western modernity (Hirsch & Macdonald 2007), they highlight the temporal and cultural basis of creativity by studying the paradox of its routinization: the socializing institutions and techniques (e.g. imitation and ritualized memorization) that naturalize creativity (Wilf 2014a). Studying the lived experience of academic jazz programmes, Wilf (2014b) demonstrated this paradox. The answer to this conundrum, according to Wilf, involves socialization, the cultivation of ‘appropriate’ forms of creativity, and the maintenance of tension between different poles, such as intuition/theory. By preserving such tension, the romantic myth about the creative spark reproduces itself within the walls of highly structured modern institutions. Science and technology scholars put forward similar claims (e.g. Latour & Woolgar 1986; Pickering 2010; Strand, Saltelli, Giampietro, Rommetveit & Funtowicz 2018), pointing to the social and collective life of scientific creation (Sismondo 2010). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 3 Bringing these different arguments together inverts the cultural image of the genius inspired by an inner muse. Instead of coming ex nihilo, creative action is culturally driven – it constitutes itself as playfulness in relation to existing social elements. Furthermore, it involves social recognition, since things (objects, ideas, and other cultural traits) are not inherently creative; they are labelled as such and thus are relational across time and space, sometimes amplified through social institutions that teach and routinize creativity. Turning to innovation, some early anthropologists associated it with social change. Operating with an evolutionary perspective or interested in the ways in which civilization occurs (Boas 1904), they treated innovation as an act of social creation that enables societies to advance from one stage to another (e.g. Tylor 1878; for elaboration, see Godin 2017). Others used the term when describing fine-grained or small-scale social changes, particularly in relation to the adoption or rejection of cultural traits (e.g. Linton 1927; Watson 1943).3 However, in their recent review, Ufer and Hausstein (2021) note that the term ‘innovation’ was largely absent from early anthropological literature. Our treatment of innovation is quite different from that of the earlier work outlined above. Specifically, we are interested in the inner workings and social practices that constitute innovation in today’s techno-scientific modernity. Instead of asking how ethnographic knowledge might serve innovation (Hoholm & Araujo 2011; Welz 2003) or how innovation might cause social change (Tylor 1878; Watson 1943), we focus on the cultural configurations in and around innovation. Within such a mode of analysis, we are interested not in what innovation is (Welz 2003) but in how it is made. From this perspective, innovation comes to follow specific cultural rules. In scientific innovation, an ‘institutional economy of repetition’ (Corsín Jiménez 2008: 25) manifests itself in such a way that a knowledge-scholarship dialogue is produced and science regenerates itself from within. In business, innovation was argued to be ‘in the (organizational) box’ (Lex 2016: 230), rooted in the organizational context and the possibilities and constraints it prescribes. Studying innovation consultants, Wilf (2019) elucidated the social processes through which such consultants operate to ‘innovate innovation’ and, in the process, establish a range of institutional strategies that routinize innovation. Therefore, innovation comes forth as a cultural fact, the product of social conditions and cultural rules. In this article, we build on these insights while emphasizing a different angle. Until now, innovation has been studied mainly in urban-modern contexts. It is our impression that the general study of innovation is reluctant to challenge the premises of modernization – the meta-rationale that ties innovation to the concepts and ethos of progress and modernity (Godin 2015). The setting in which the mechanics of innovation are scrutinized is generally homogeneous, the empirical gaze being directed towards technological hotspots like New York, Tokyo, or Silicon Valley. In fact, the choice of such sites should be understood as part of this dominant ethos and the long tradition of social theory that ties all things modern to the city. The concept of the urban lay at the centre of various attempts to unpack major transformations within modern society (e.g. Durkheim 2013 [1893]; Tönnies 1988 [1887]). The association between the two is so strong that one may speak in terms of ‘urban modernity’ and its relationship to the ‘urban condition’ (Gleeson 2014). In short, the city has become a synonym of all that is modern – of progress (Short 2012). Meanwhile, the concept of innovation, which since the late nineteenth century has been tied to the rationality of modernization (Godin 2015), has also been intertwined with Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 4 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem ‘the city’. This is the ‘innovation machine’ (Florida, Adler & Mellander 2017), the site wherein innovation occurs. This coupling of modernity, innovation, and the city could explain the sparse treatment of non-urban sites in the study of innovation. Assuming that innovation is socioculturally contextualized and thus relates to particular forms and modifications, we are interested in unpacking the specific practices and forms of innovation that develop and emerge in what we term ‘rural forms of innovation’.4 That is, on the one hand, we aim to examine and conceptualize local forms of innovation without subordinating them in advance to a meta-ethos of modernity and urbanity, and, on the other hand, to bring forward their particular sociocultural contexts and the unique forms of innovation and micro practices that emerge in the field. We identified practices of ‘imitation’ that might speak to common conceptions of what innovation often ‘is’ and are therefore couched in the language of an ‘urban’ setting design. In addition, we identified other forms of ‘doing’ innovation that placed considerable emphasis on the connection to the local space and community. By being attuned to them, our study runs counter to the individualist (non-institutionalized) romantic ethos of creativity (following the critique in Wilf 2019) and the modernurbanist vision of innovation. Instead, and following the notion of community in its rather classic sense (Redfield 1989 [1955]), namely as a specific geographical location within which one lives and shares a communal life, we point to the communal element of innovation. Lastly, following Moeran’s (2014) reading of creativity, we argue that innovation is not merely about thinking out of the box but also about being on the edge. Indeed, the rural forms of innovations that we observed at the innovation centres are just there: on the edge of the typical individual-modern-urban box. Innovation in Israel With a population of approximately 9 million people in an area roughly the size of New Jersey, Israel is known as a high-tech innovation powerhouse. It has the highest number of companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market after the United States and China (Williams 2018) and is frequently referred to as the ‘start-up nation’ (Senor & Singer 2011). This image of innovation, however, did not emerge spontaneously. For over a century, the canonical ethos of ‘making the desert bloom’ dominated Israel’s nation-building endeavours, demanding a strong commitment to technological innovation (Tal 2007). In addition, post-independence, the Israeli state invested in knowledge institutions to support the establishment of a robust science and technology sector (Barell 2014; Maggor 2021). The focus of this strategy was on research and development (R&D) activities, with a specific emphasis on the arms industry (Barell 2014; Y. Katz & Bohbot 2017). As a result, a thriving tech environment evolved, providing Israeli entrepreneurs with a dynamic and globally connected knowledge network (Fraiberg 2017; Yeshua-Katz & Efrat-Treister 2021) and infused with a strong sense of in-group solidarity, largely due to the socialization effect of the technological units of the Israel Defence Forces. Eyeing rural development and nation-building, the state promoted an innovation policy through a nexus of different laws and government committees. Currently led by the Israel Innovation Authority, the policy offers financial incentives for nascent firms operating in designated locations. A cyberpark was established in Be’erSheva, a city in southern Israel, hosting a range of commercial, governmental, and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 5 educational initiatives for the advancement of cybersecurity, providing an example of a peripheral site of innovation that resulted from an explicit national policy. However, the technological innovation centres we examine were not created as the result of a particular government decision and are located in more remote areas of the country. Specifically, many of our research sites are located in a particular social setting, the Israeli kibbutzim. The first kibbutzim were founded in Israel in the early twentieth century. From their founding, these institutions served as testing grounds for agricultural experimentation (Tal 2021), and over time many kibbutzim set up factories and engaged in industrial production. During this period, with their roots in socialist ideology, the kibbutzim represented a genuine attempt to create community (Near 2011) and were characterized by an ethos of equality. At their peak, they offered a distinct model of social life, ‘a comprehensive system in which members live, raise children, work and create, grow old and pass away’ (Golomb & Katz 1971, cited in Palgi & Reinharz 2017: 3). Over the years, however, and with the general neoliberalization of Israel, the kibbutzim underwent a radical transformation, which included a weakening of their socialist ideological roots and the loss of much of their communal spirit. While some remained fully collective, the majority underwent different degrees of renewal processes, with privatization at the extreme end (Palgi & Reinharz 2017). Nonetheless, despite the growth of individualism and the move away from ‘developmental communalism’, the kibbutzim still constitute ‘intentional communities’ (Ben-Rafael & Shemer 2021: 243) and a powerful symbol of communal non-urban life.5 This is also the place to explain an important terminological choice we made. The centre-periphery dichotomy is prevalent in Israeli public discourse and can be considered the emic perspective. Whereas periphery is associated with geographical position, it also relates to socioeconomic classification. It is not limited to smaller types of settlements, such as agricultural villages or kibbutzim, and can also encompass towns and cities. A further complexity arises from the fact that social periphery can be found even in geographically central locations. On the other hand, owing to Israel’s conflicted social hierarchy, kibbutzim are not considered part of the social periphery but usually fall under the sometimes-overlooked notion of Hamerchav Hakaferi (the rural area, in Hebrew). To distance ourselves from this duality (of centre vs periphery) and the associated questions of social and economic capital, we embrace the term rural, even though it may be somewhat external to the Israeli conversation, thus representing an etic perspective. That said, we regard the existence of an ethos and practice of innovation (within the context of technological innovation) at these unorthodox sites as a great opportunity for unpacking what might have been taken for granted in the very understanding of the concept of innovation. The establishment of such sites might initially be explained as simply yet another story about the long reach of modernity: of how technological innovation – the pinnacle of capitalism and individualism – reached the socialideological and rural arena of the kibbutzim. Alternatively, we would argue that, in these sites, the very way in which we understand innovation gains new meaning as new empirical configurations and local forms of how ‘to do’ innovation and ‘to be’ innovative emerge. Specifically, we explore the intersection of sociocultural locality and innovation: the configurations that arise in a process that we refer to as being ‘in sync with the area’. We also highlight the existence of a communal element in the context of Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 6 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem innovation, alongside the expected individualist entrepreneurship aspirations. Far from being an issue of ‘moving back’ from urban forms of innovation to un/premodern indigenous forms, this is a contemporary configuration of innovation. This rural mode of innovation emerges from available cultural rules, marking innovation as tied with local cultural settings and highly communal aspects. Local forms of innovation Rustic on the outside, techy on the inside So you arrived at the kibbutz. OK, now turn right. Drive along the security fence. The cowshed will be on your left. After that is the tractor shed. Keep going. Look on your left. There is a small playground. Cross it and pull in to the parking lot on the left. You are there. These were the instructions we received when we arrived to visit RuralTech, an innovation centre located in the middle of a kibbutz in a remote part of northern Israel.6 Stepping out of the car after a drive of several hours, we were greeted by the mesmerizing silence and striking heat. It was the middle of a hot summer’s day, and not a single soul was in sight. Zaki Fadida, one of the centre’s managers and our host for the day, then appeared and invited us to step inside while he provided information about the centre. RuralTech was situated within a rustic kibbutz building that had been completely renovated in a way that combined typical high-tech design features with elements that recalled the building’s previous iconic role as the kibbutz’s youth educational centre. At the far end of the centre was a small meeting room with glass doors and a large monitor for video conferences – an essential feature not just during the social-distancing days of the COVID-19 pandemic but also given the remoteness of the kibbutz. Crossing the threshold, we entered a space that could almost have been located in any of the numerous skyscrapers that host tech companies in metropolises such as Tel Aviv, New York, and London. Such resemblances were notable in other cases, too. An innovation centre we visited in the middle of the desert looked very much like a typical WeWork workspace (see Fig. 1), yet was located on the second floor of the kibbutz’s old dining hall building (Heder Ochel), which had stood abandoned for years. To put things in context, the communal dining hall is an iconic institution within the kibbutzim tradition and formerly functioned as a place where the community would socialize on a daily basis. Ideologically, then, it also represents key values such as equality and non-personal ownership of space, as well as the priority of the communal over the individual. The words on the wall – ‘Omrim she’haya poh’ (‘They say things were’) – refer to the building’s past. They are taken from the first line of a classic poem by Arik Einstein, one of Israel’s most beloved songwriters. Invoking such a strong cultural icon, they reflect a longing for the ‘good old days’. We identified the use of iconic local spaces in other cases, too. For example, a youth centre from the 1950s (Fig. 2) had been transformed into an innovation centre (Fig. 3). The historical façade displays another line of poetry from a national icon, Rachel (Bluwstein) the Poetess: ‘Ekra heyddad ha’neuri!’ (‘I will shout: hurrah to youth!’). Inside, the interior had been completely redesigned to include workstations and conference rooms. A place that once carried the promise of the next generation now serves as home to ‘the future’. The use of this space, therefore, is highly symbolic and speaks both to the commemoration of the past and to futuristic goals, echoing the same ethos of ‘newness’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 7 Figure 1. A historical dining hall converted into a shared workspace. (Photograph by Amit Sheniak, 2021.) Figure 2. A kibbutz youth centre from the 1950s. (Avital Dafna, Maoz Haiem Archive, 1955.) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 8 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem Figure 3. The same kibbutz youth centre transformed into an innovation centre today. (Photograph by Amit Sheniak, 2021.) From Leonard Dvorkin, we learned more about the renewal of such local institutions and their transformation into local innovation centres: that is, about the use of modernist external and internal design features as a means to create enclaves imbued with the spirit of technological innovation while retaining the original setting. The co-founder of a high-tech incubator in a kibbutz located in the middle of the Negev Desert, Dvorkin explained that the original plan was to establish a co-working space and accommodation to attract residents: Next to us was the building of the old hatchery, which had been abandoned, and I said to the finance manager of the kibbutz in a conversation in the dining room: ‘How cool it would be if we renovated it and transformed it into a WeWork centre’. From there, he turned to the subject of lodging: ‘Once I started to design the super-cute kibbutz houses and turned them into guest rooms … people who came from Tel Aviv got excited and wanted to stay’. The design of a ‘high-tech-style’ working environment was viewed as a symbolic change, geared to attract a young and skilled population. The old rural building suddenly seemed to offer the potential for the creation of an entirely new work culture. Viewed together, these sites exemplify the importation of particular sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim 2009), together with their economic and political contexts, from their original urban settings to some of Israel’s most symbolically laden collectivist institutions. Put differently, they demonstrate a creative play (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020) with the available cultural forms. The location and atmosphere had been purposely chosen to reinforce a sense of connection with the local community’s history and culture – a true work of creative action that involved the recombination of existing cultural forms (Liep 2001). Kinneret Megadim, a co-ordinator at the innovation centre we call Ignite, recalled how she and her colleagues had been asked about their needs when the centre was just being launched, to which they had replied: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 9 We said we needed a building from which we could start a start-up incubator, but a place that would still maintain the kibbutz atmosphere. It was very important for us to retain the communal atmosphere of a kibbutz – a place where everyone knows everyone … They left the tables of the old kibbutz dining room to preserve the atmosphere, which became a hub of shared open work space, and it is fun to work here. In addition to resembling each other physically, the innovation centres we visited shared a common language. RuralTech’s primary mission, for example, is to identify possible solutions in the fields of agro-tech, aqua-tech, and climate-tech. It also serves as a co-working space, available to members of the local community for a modest fee. As Zaki Fadida explained enthusiastically, ‘Every day four or five people sit and work … The place serves as a workplace for skilled high-tech workers, as a place that is supposed to generate interaction’. As the conversation rolled on, we also learned from Zaki that the centre organizes evening meetings based on the model of the ‘meetup’: a social gathering around a designated theme. The idea was to stimulate interest in tech topics among members of the local community and to foster collaboration. Taken together, these two practices – ‘co-working’ and ‘meetups’ – speak to the now-familiar idea of connectivity as a trigger of innovation. Indeed, the fact that this particular centre was located in one of the country’s most rural areas was almost forgotten during discussions like these. The other centres we visited were similar. With stylishly designed offices, they spoke the language of connectivity and reflected the idea that interactions and dialogue serve to ignite the creative spark, eventually producing innovation. In this sense, they were no different from centres located in Tel Aviv or other metropolises around the world, and might be viewed as oases of innovation in the middle of the desert. The mimetic elements we observed in such contexts echo Godin’s (2015) observation that innovation has come to be associated with modernity and progress. However, when we take a closer look at the actors and institutions involved, their experience and their environment, a distinct model of community, space, and innovation begins to take form. It’s the community, stupid A characteristic of working in these rural innovation centres that was often mentioned was a sense of close professional ties. Speaking about the friendly atmosphere at his firm, which was based in Ignite, Ran Vital ascribed it to a small-town mentality. During a conversation, when the topic was brought up, he explained: ‘The atmosphere here is very communal. People are from the same area and from a more communal background … Community really means something around here, and people are used to it … There is a feeling of togetherness and cohesion’. Similar comments were made by Ezri Finkel, who lives and works in the same region. Talking about his firm’s employees, he said that around half were local and that, as a result, the firm was characterized by a ‘DNA of friendship and familiarity’. A similar story was told about ties between firms. Far from the big city, and with offices located just across the hall from each other, help between different firms was usually extended with a smile. Eli Kamin, who had previously worked in several industrial parks located in urban parts of the country, shared her personal experience and unique perspective with us: I worked in all kinds of industrial parks. If you need help, it has its price. Here, it is on a friendly level. ‘Listen, I need your assistance …’. And they don’t think about what they will get in exchange. They are happy to assist, to demonstrate their knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 10 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem In turn, staff at the centres stressed their desire to support and nourish a community. Kinneret Megadim, the co-ordinator at Ignite who referred to herself as a ‘local router’, explained: We established a positive atmosphere between everyone, which is part of the whole thing … They all experience it together. If a firm is having a hard time, we will help it to raise investment. One firm had to send people on furlough [owing to COVID-19] … and we cared for it – a sense of community. Whereas technological innovation often relies on professional networks, and the Israeli tech scene is recognized for its strong in-group solidarity (Yeshua-Katz & Efrat-Treister 2021), these rural innovation centres sought to provide something else. From the perspective of some of the centres, one aspect of their communal contribution was to lessen the burden faced by young innovators. Given the challenges and expenses of city life, these centres attempted to provide young innovators with an opportunity to free up time for creativity and productivity in the seed phase of their initiatives. At times, this was done indirectly, simply through the lower cost of living in the countryside, where accommodation is affordable and located close to the newly established innovation centres. The equation envisioned here was that an improved work-life balance would equal (increased) innovation. In one extreme example, shared by Leonard Dvorkin, an attempt had been made to launch a high-tech ‘socialist bootcamp’. During its short lifespan, the bootcamp provided start-up workers with all necessary services, such as a canteen, laundry facilities, and educational services for family members, the aim being to enable residents to concentrate solely on their work. Community was present also on another dimension, as a question of integration and operation within one’s own community. Such an approach was seen both as a source for motivation and as a useful resource. As Boaz Yadlin of InnoSun put it: That you know your community and the community knows you, and you know key figures in the community … increases [your] motivation and provides you with an extra sense of reassurance and simplifies things. You don’t have a moment in which you don’t know what to do or whom to contact. Reading between the lines, we see that the story of innovation presented here is not individualistic (based on the ethos of the creative genius) but communal. What is described is not an instrumental perspective on the importance of knowing the right people. Rather, the issue is about living in a particular social environment and developing the kinds of mutual relationships and communal involvement that might enable people to fulfil their ‘individual’ capabilities. Another version of the same idea was expressed in terms of care for the community, which was understood as vital for the longevity of these local innovation sites. One interviewee, who had returned to his local community after years of living in a city, was frustrated by the absence of tech education. To improve the situation, he and a group of like-minded individuals had begun to organize seminars and open talks, with the goal of initiating local training programmes for youth. The aim was to expose them to technology and to spark their interest in the field. A similar take was expressed by Omer Hever, who had returned to his home community after years of living in Silicon Valley to take up a leadership position at InnoSun. Speaking more directly about the structural process involved in establishing a thriving tech scene, he emphasized the need for long-term investments in the community, which he conceptualized as ‘bedding’. Reframing James Carville’s renowned phrase ‘it’s the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 11 economy, stupid’, Hever told us that ‘it’s the people, stupid … Community is the basis of everything’. At times, the well-being of the local community was very present in the minds of our interlocutors. The case of RuralTech, an innovation centre founded by a business co-operative consisting of several kibbutzim, provides useful insight here. Established as a for-profit organization that seeks to craft innovative solutions to well-identified needs, RuralTech nevertheless employs a comprehensive social perspective. During a conversation with Zaki Fadida, we came to learn that part of the centre’s overall vision was to promote regional development in order to contribute back to the community: for instance, by creating jobs that were satisfying, professionally and fiscally, for an educated workforce that is currently being forced to commute or to move elsewhere to make a living. A unique venture capital fund for innovation, supported by the Kibbutz Movement, an association of over two hundred kibbutzim, provides another relevant example of the presence of a broader social mission. The fund’s investment experts assist individual kibbutzim in identifying suitable tech firms to invest in. Positioning the fund’s activity within the broad historical context of the Kibbutz Movement, Ronen Nehorai, one of the fund’s senior managers, explained that its investments were seen as a way of breathing new life into the kibbutzim, enabling them to better face current socioeconomic challenges and increase their social and economic resilience. The individuals in charge of this fund, which is run by kibbutzim and for kibbutzim, thus viewed innovation as a tool for re-establishing the communal ethos and as a driving force for social and economic renewal. As we metaphorically and physically travelled the field, we regularly asked questions about the nature of innovation. A typical conversation might include something like the following: ‘Yes, we understand that community is very important, but does it affect your perception or practices of innovation?’ It became clear, however, that some of our interlocutors had extended the meaning of the word ‘innovation’, which they now strongly associated with the idea of ‘growth’. Furthermore, instead of a narrow perspective that focused on the growth of their own firm, they often referred to regional growth. To put this differently, some viewed their work as being not only about identifying the next brightest idea but also about regional development. Although many (though certainly not all) Israeli high-tech companies articulate their goals in terms of higher-level socially oriented goals, our interlocutors referred to specific goals that were about contributing to their local community. A co-founder of an accelerator that had been subsequently transformed into Spark, an innovation centre located in yet another rural community, Eliyahu Yachin explained the difference: ‘You shift from focusing on developing start-ups to a focus on developing the region … This is a model that prioritizes the development of the region, creating new jobs, long-term planning’. In other words, the range of issues Yachin takes into consideration does not solely reflect the classic business-oriented modus operandi with its narrow focus on the firm but also embraces a wider perspective related to the social environment. This point was further explained by Micha Shenhav, an entrepreneur with a social vision who used Alice in Wonderland to illustrate his way of thinking. In that book, when asked by Alice which way she should take, the Cheshire Cat replies: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to’. In other words, as Shenhav explained, one’s choice of path ‘is about what is important for you, your values and goals’. Bringing the conversation back to his professional field, he added: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 12 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem You want everyone to ‘talk’ together because innovation will occur in this in-between space. This is why economically there is no reason to initiate peripheral [innovation] clusters. But I argue that, socially, doing so has a significant added value … I believe that this whole innovation thing should be more decentralized, more about values and society. The narrative about community and communal effects that we observe here is not simply referring to business management arguments about the importance of close professional ties for the cultivation of innovation. Terms such as ‘ecosystem’, ‘cluster’, and ‘co-working space’ are all based on the idea of generating interactions and knowledge flow (Cárdenas 2021). The idea of community and the ‘social’ that emerges in our case, however, is much broader. In extreme cases, such as that of the ‘socialist bootcamp’, it might even cover all aspects of life. More commonly, it speaks for a sense of embeddedness within the local region. The community charges individuals with a drive to innovate, and in turn is often present in innovators’ minds. Education becomes integral to the overall process, as does a degree of regional development. Hence, our case is not simply another example of novel high-tech co-operation. Rather, somewhat counter to the modernist ethos of the technologically advanced city and the attendant notion of the exceptional and capitalist individual, it highlights the role of communality as an important part of the way in which innovation occurs in such contexts. In sync with the area ‘Does the locality matter?’ was a question that came up often in our conversations. Sometimes, the intuitive answer was no. Like others within the high-tech sector, individuals saw their firm’s activity as being entirely independent of its physical environment and believed that it could be based almost anywhere as long as there was a train station nearby and a reliable internet connection. However, as Zaki Fadida pointed out, ‘If you are [in the business of] doing innovation and are based somewhere, you should know how to take advantage of the area where you operate’. Kimi Shenhav, an entrepreneur based in Ignite, further explained the point to us: Most start-ups that you will see in the periphery are somewhat different. Most of the software [startups] are in Tel Aviv. Whoever is located in the periphery has a reason. Some of these reasons are to be closer to factories, to kibbutzim, and to organizations that might be relevant to the firm’s development. Indeed, establishing ties with local suppliers was sometimes mentioned. In the case of one start-up that is located at Ignite and develops medical devices, Ran Vital explained: ‘We get our swine from [Kibbutz X]. In [the nearby town], there is a factory for biodegradable medical devices … We contacted the CEO and he supports us with equipment’. In this case, then, the location enabled proximity to vital suppliers. In other cases, however, and in a way that points to a deeper meaning, location was marked as important because of the unique characteristics of these rural areas. For example, this nexus of location and innovation can be viewed as creating a shared ‘playground’. Based in the middle of the desert, Boaz Yadlin of InnoSun explained the situation to us: In the field of renewable energy, we have it all … solar energy without limits during the whole year … And there is wind energy that you can use as the winds here are very strong. And there is also the sea … a variety of resources you can use. For him, the natural environment presented endless opportunities for experimenting with new technologies. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 13 While not all innovation centres adopted a specific theme, some had developed expertise in agro-tech. This opened up the possibility for firms to experiment in the local area, treating it as a natural lab. As Oded Limone put it: ‘I’ve got the fields here. I’ve got the farmers, where actual [agricultural] work takes place’. Although it is possible to find examples for the significance of local conditions for urban innovation (e.g. Boston with its thriving biotech industry), what we see is a substantive engagement with local actors. Building on local knowledge, these entrepreneurs turn to focus on rural-related subjects, such as aqua-tech, solar energy, or agro-tech. This point was made via the example of commercial fish farms. To increase productivity in the light of growing competition from imported goods, Zaki Fadida from RuralTech explained how developers had turned to local knowledge: ‘We gathered people aged 60-70 with a lot of experience and we tried to understand what challenges they face daily growing fish and how can we integrate technology as a result’. The ensuing conversation revealed that conditions in the water were literally unknown. Growers used to ‘drive to the fishpond and in the good case use an oxygen meter or thermometer and in the worst case just look at the water to assess what was going on’. The solution was to improve measurement techniques using remote-sensing instruments. While it is still in the trial stage, growers now compare the neat figures and tables produced by the automated system with their own experience, often saying, ‘Yes, this makes sense’. It is possible to identify a rationale related to the local region also among the more generalist innovation centres. During a conversation with Eliyahu Yachin from Spark, we asked about the types of firms they were looking to support. Taking a moment to reflect upon the question, he explained: I can say what I am not interested in – something that is clearly a start-up company that will grow to thirty employees and won’t be able to remain in the area. So it doesn’t fit in here. Such a firm is clearly not suitable to evolve around here – for example, a cyber firm, OK? Its ecosystem is in Tel Aviv: the clients and the investors are in Tel Aviv. It won’t be right for such a firm to develop here because it has significant disadvantages. It has a better ecosystem in Tel Aviv. In the end, a firm will evolve where it gets the most significant value in terms of its location. Turning to the professional jargon of ‘ecosystem’, Yachin here points to something important. While not seeking to define the theme of his innovation centre in advance, he emphasized the need for a basic fit. Innovation would not flourish if a company was out of place. This idea was further explained by Omer Hever from InnoSun, who defined himself as a specialist in ecosystem-building with experience working for a large US investment firm with international offices. When asked about the elusive quality that stands between success and failure, he paused and explained that it all boils down to the need to do things ‘organically’: that is, to think and act according to local capabilities while planning for the long term. Oded Limone, a senior member of staff at the local municipal council, explained to us during an interview that this council wished to build on the region’s existing agricultural legacy while also advancing its technological base. The innovation centre fitted in well with such a plan, as it was viewed as an instrument for generating economic growth in the entire area. Limone’s account also emphasizes the relevance of local governance (rather than national initiatives) that is involved in these rural innovation processes, building on existing traditions. This stands in contrast with concepts like ‘cluster innovation’ (Porter 1998), where innovation policies are imported with the aim Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 14 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem of artificially assigning a distinct innovation identity to specific spaces. As Zaki Fadida explained: We wanted to think differently: how to establish innovation by building on the experience available here in the valley. I don’t want to bring [big companies such as] Intel or Elbit. I want to rely on local business activity, which is mainly agriculture, traditional manufacturing, and aquaculture. Taken together, the above descriptions portray the work of innovation in ways that downplay the notion of an individual capability that is detached from its surroundings. Instead, innovation emerges here as part of a collective activity that emphasizes the importance of local knowledge and the influence of the distinct qualities of each locus. Such an approach points to the particularities that shape innovation and render it a collective action. To borrow from the literature on creativity (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020; Liep 2001; Moeran 2014), it was argued that designating something as creative builds on a relative view (i.e. understanding creativity as a social construct that requires social recognition), an observation that underlines the social elements involved in marking an object or idea as novel. Following existing anthropological studies about the cultural rules at play around innovation (Corsín Jiménez 2008; Lex 2016; Wilf 2019), we might say that the approach of the innovation centres examined here takes on an inherently communal aspect. In addition, while it may take a team to build a village, both the team and the village are ‘co-produced’ (Jasanoff 2004) and shaped in different ways as a result of the particular characteristics of the social and local/regional elements in individual cases. Put differently, whereas the technical literature on the fostering of innovation emphasizes the rather shapeless and decentralized network logic (Cárdenas 2021), we identified a concrete field of interactions – a site for the creation of local forms of innovation and innovation (as a scientific object) in itself. Conclusions Innovation has often been understood as the result of micro chains of knowledge exchange and dialogue between agents that can be advanced by state-led innovation policy (Maggor 2021; Mazzucato 2011). Beyond such normative understandings, which aim to foster and boost innovation, it has been treated as a social object: innovation comes to symbolize modernism (Godin 2015). Irrespective of the position used – that is, whether one adopts a critical or a normative approach to the study of innovation – it is urban innovation that has been envisioned in most previous thinking about the term. In contrast, in this article we have shifted our empirical gaze towards non-urban loci and the growing technological innovation scene now operating in Israel’s rural areas. Turning to innovation in rural locations has allowed us to gain insights into additional ways in which the social construction of innovation takes place. In these sites, we find the same practice-oriented terminology of ‘connectivity’ and ‘ecosystems’ (Krause 2016), as well as the shiny interiors that speak the appropriate high-tech design language. This can be viewed as an example of the importation of urban ‘travelling social technical imaginaries’ (Pfotenhauer & Jasanoff 2017) to other loci. However, the importation we witness is superficial. While an implicit capitalist power may be another possible explanation, whereby the market logic penetrates these rural sites and claims communality, we are more interested in the actuality of cultural production generated in these encounters. Finally, while the question of how physical space and interactions create a sense of community is an important one (Blagoev, Costas & Kärreman 2019; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 15 Boyer 2018), our focus rests elsewhere, eyeing not the community within the innovation centres but rather the wider community. Following this reasoning, as we dug deeper, local communal and regional settings came to the surface. The result is a fusion of innovation locality and community. Nevertheless, the innovation centres and start-up companies that we visited are not owned by the specific kibbutzim that host them. We have therefore refrained from speaking about local community projects per se, as such a perspective does not accurately reflect the situation we observed. That said, the mode of innovation we encountered is grounded on non-urban and communal forms of innovation. Moving past former accounts that highlighted communal workspaces and alliance-building as forms of community practices (in the style of Google’s playful offices or WeWork’s ethos), our findings speak for multi-level engagement: with the community, the local site, and the wider region in which these are all located. Accordingly, we contend that innovation should be understood as much more than just the profit-making engine of one entity or another or a means to modernize and develop the countryside. From an anthropological perspective, the question moves away from what the product or outcome of innovation is in order to focus on the sociocultural regularities and conversations, expressing a particular ethos within a distinct locality, that unfold in the process of innovation. It is not that innovation becomes disassociated from the rationales of market mechanisms, individualism, and Western modernity when it is located in rural areas. After all, in the cases we examined, innovation was strongly endorsed as a path towards regional development and progress. However, the promotion of innovation in these sites involved a communal perspective and reliance on localized tacit knowledge that reflects the interconnectivity between culture and physical environment. As the Cheshire Cat told Alice, the way to a destination depends on one’s values and goals – to which we add, available resources. Thus, alongside the modernist and ultra-capitalist view of innovation as an artificial pre-designed process (Wilf 2019), we identified the integration of a range of societal considerations that guide and affect particular forms of innovation (in this locality of rural areas), which are structured in ways that reflect the rich legacy of social cohesion in the communities located in these regions. Put differently, we see a re-contextualization of the pre-existing ethos that feeds into the social work around innovation; this is innovation cutting at the edge. This re-contextualization enables us to move past the binary classification of urban/rural. We may find communal elements and a degree of regionality in urban forms of innovation. Edgework or the quality of the edge is not confined to remote geographical frontiers, as borders also exist within and between urban neighbourhoods, social groups, and the like (Wilson 2014), and facilitate exchange and creative play with culture elements (Ben-Ari & Otmazgin 2020; Moeran 2014). Similarly, individuals with an entrepreneurial spirit still play a role in rural areas, raising new ideas and opportunities. At the same time, it is wise not to over-idealize the communal aspect/type and to differentiate between diverse forms and modes of communality. Think, for example, about the rise and fall of WeWork and its co-founder Adam Neumann, a former kibbutz member who promoted an ethos of a tech community within an urban organizational setting. In our perspective, the case of Neumann and WeWork also reflects the importation of sociotechnological imaginaries of innovation, this time from the rural (kibbutz) to the urban (city centre), showing how it remains merely on the surface. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 16 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem Connecting all these dots together, what comes forth is the realization that elements such as communality and localism are best explored as a spectrum. Different cultural rules are likely to steer towards different degrees of commonality and localism as they shape and interact with the operation of innovation. From this perspective, the question turns to the social mechanisms and practicalities that sustain these incidents of innovation. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel (research no. 2018232). NOTES 1 Referring to ‘rural’ as a concept that describes a relative ‘location’, both physically and conceptually, can lead to associating it with other relevant sociocultural concepts such as ‘the edge’ and the ‘countryside’. Indeed, the locations we visited were in the Israeli rural countryside, at the country’s social and geographical edge. Although we acknowledge that these sites can be viewed as representative of the collective mode of innovation ‘of the edge’, that is, bridging between individuals’ ‘out of the box’ thinking and sociocultural contexts/processes, we do not follow this sociospatial association. We refer to ‘rural’ as a concept that represents a non-urban environment for the processes of innovation that we explore. 2 Somewhat differently, as they objected to the tradition-novelty duality, Ingold and Hallam (2007) highlighted the ‘in-the-making’ nature of creativity, in which improvisation is key. Yet, as pointed out by Wilf (2014a), this ongoing improvisation also relies on pre-existing cultural patterns. 3 Relatedly, entrepreneurship is another prism that anthropologists use to study social change. The earlier literature focused on individual entrepreneurs as agents of change (Stewart 1992), whereas, more recently, Pfeilstetter (2022) refers to the social interactions involved in this process. 4 Rural innovation research is linked with rural sociology and the study of the adaptation of rural communities to global change (e.g. Eder 2019; Lionberger 1960; Yin, Chen & Li 2022). Yet this research is highly applicative and runs quite far from our initial notion of the term. 5 We acknowledge the diverse ideological backgrounds of the kibbutzim and their current state of plurality. Since we do not study the Kibbutz Movement and its shifting ideological structure as a sociocultural phenomenon but rather focus on kibbutzim as sites of innovation, this complexity lies outside the scope of the present article. 6 To protect our informants’ privacy – not an easy task given the tight professional network that characterizes the field – all names provided are pseudonyms. A similar approach has been adopted in relation to the names and characteristics of the centres described. REFERENCES Barell, A. 2014. Engineer-king: David Ben-Gurion, science, and nation building. Sde Boker: Sde Boker Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism. Ben-Ari, E. & N. Otmazgin 2020. Creativity and innovation in the media and cultural industries: setting an agenda for the social and human sciences. In Creative context: creativity and innovation in the media and cultural industries (eds) N. Otmazgin & E. Ben-Ari, 3-14. Singapore: Springer. Ben-Rafael, E. & O. Shemer 2021. Epilogue. In The metamorphosis of the kibbutz (eds) E. Ben-Rafael & O. Shemer, 243-8. Leiden: Brill. Blagoev, B., J. Costas & D. Kärreman 2019. ‘We are all herd animals’: community and organizationality in coworking spaces. Organization , 894-916. Boas, F. 1904. The history of anthropology. Science , 513-24. Boyer, M. 2018. Working alone, together: coworking, community, and cultural flow. Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Cárdenas, J. 2021. Networking for innovation: an analysis of research on social networks, social capital, and innovation. International Review of Sociology , 392-409. Cooke, P. 2001. Regional innovation systems, clusters, and the knowledge economy. Industrial and Corporate Change , 945-74. Corsín Jiménez, A. 2008. Economies of repetition: anthropology on the cultures of innovation. Revista Madrid+d , 21-6. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 17 Durkheim, É. 2013 [1893]. The division of labour in society (ed. S. Lukes; trans. W.D. Halls) (Second edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eder, J. 2019. Innovation in the periphery: a critical survey and research agenda. International Regional Science Review , 119-46. Farivar, C. 2021. What tech companies want: Miami bets on lower-cost workers and fewer regulations. NBC News, 24 January. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tech-flight-why-silicon-valleyheading-miami-austin-texas-n. Florida, R., P. Adler & C. Mellander 2017. The city as innovation machine. Regional Studies , 86-96. Fraiberg, S. 2017. Start-up nation: studying transnational entrepreneurial practices in Israel’s start-up ecosystem. Journal of Business and Technical Communication , 350-88. Gleeson, B. 2014. The urban condition. London: Routledge. Godin, B. 2015. Innovation contested: the idea of innovation over the centuries. New York: Routledge. 2017. Models of innovation: the history of an idea. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Golomb, N. & D. Katz 1971. The kibbutz as a social system. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Hapoalim. Hirsch, E. & S. Macdonald 2007. Introduction. In Creativity and cultural improvisation (eds) E. Hallam & T. Ingold, 185-92. Oxford: Berg. Hoholm, T. & L. Araujo 2011. Studying innovation processes in real-time: the promises and challenges of ethnography. Industrial Marketing Management , 933-9. Ingold, T. & E. Hallam 2007. Creativity and cultural improvisation: an introduction. In Creativity and cultural improvisation (eds) E. Hallam & T. Ingold, 1-24. Oxford: Berg. Jasanoff, S. (ed.) 2004. States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order. London: Routledge. & S.-H. Kim 2009. Containing the atom: sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea. Minerva , 119-46. Katz, B.J. & J. Wagner 2014. The rise of urban innovation districts. Harvard Business Review, 12 November. https://hbr.org///the-rise-of-urban-innovation-districts. Katz, Y. & A. Bohbot 2017. The weapon wizards: how Israel became a high-tech military superpower. New York: St Martin’s Press. Krause, L.N. 2016. The creation of a local innovation ecosystem in Japan for nurturing global entrepreneurs. In The economics of ecology, exchange, and adaptation: anthropological explorations (ed.) D.C. Wood, 25383. Bingley, W. Yorks: Emerald. Latour, B. & S. Woolgar 1986. Laboratory life: the construction of scientific facts. Princeton: University Press. Lex, S. 2016. In search of innovation: operating with the future as working imperative. Human Organization , 230-8. Liep, J. 2001. Introduction. In Locating cultural creativity (ed.) J. Liep, 1-13. London: Pluto Press. Linton, R. 1927. Report on work of field museum expedition in Madagascar. American Anthropologist , 292-307. Lionberger, H.F. 1960. Adoption of new ideas and practices. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Lohmann, R.I. 2010. Introduction: The anthropology of creations. Anthropological Forum , 215-34. Maggor, E. 2021. The politics of innovation policy: building Israel’s ‘neo-developmental’ state. Politics & Society , 451-87. Mazzucato, M. 2011. The entrepreneurial state. Soundings , 131-42. Moeran, B. 2014. The business of creativity: toward an anthropology of worth. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press. & B.T. Christensen 2013. Introduction. In Exploring creativity: evaluative practices in innovation, design and the arts (eds) B. Moeran & B.T. Christensen, 1-42. Cambridge: University Press. Near, H. 2011. Where community happens: the kibbutz and the philosophy of communalism. Bern: Peter Lang. Palgi, M. & S. Reinharz 2017. Introduction: The kibbutz at one hundred: a century of crises and reinvention. In One hundred years of kibbutz life: a century of crises and reinvention (eds) M. Palgi & S. Reinharz, 1-12. London: Routledge. Pfeilstetter, R. 2022. The anthropology of entrepreneurship: cultural history, global ethnographies, theorizing agency. New York: Routledge. Pfotenhauer, S. & S. Jasanoff 2017. Traveling imaginaries: the ‘practice turn’ in innovation policy and the global circulation of innovation models. In The Routledge handbook of the political economy of science (eds) D. Tyfield, R. Lave, S. Randalls & C. Thorpe, 416-28. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Pickering, A. (ed.) 2010. Science as practice and culture. Chicago: University Press. Porter, M. 1998. Clusters and the new economics of competition. Harvard Business Review, NovemberDecember. https://hbr.org///clusters-and-the-new-economics-of-competition. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 18 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem Redfield, R. 1989 [1955]. The little community and peasant society and culture. Chicago: University Press. Rosaldo, R., S. Lavie & K. Narayan 1993. Introduction: Creativity in anthropology. In Creativity/ anthropology (eds) S. Lavie, K. Narayan & R. Rosaldo, 1-8. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Sapir, E. 1924. Culture, genuine and spurious. American Journal of Sociology , 401-29. Senor, D. & S. Singer 2011. Start-up nation: the story of Israel’s economic miracle. New York: Twelve. Short, J.R. 2012. Globalization, modernity, and the city. London: Routledge. Sismondo, S. 2010. An introduction to science and technology studies (Second edition). Chichester: Blackwell Publishing. Stewart, A. 1992. A prospectus on the anthropology of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice , 71-92. Strand, R., A. Saltelli, M. Giampietro, K. Rommetveit & S. Funtowicz 2018. New narratives for innovation. Journal of Cleaner Production , 1849-53. Tal, A. 2007. To make a desert bloom: the Israeli agricultural adventure and the quest for sustainability. Agricultural History , 228-57. 2021. Israeli agriculture: innovation and advancement. In From food scarcity to surplus: innovations in Indian, Chinese and Israeli agriculture (eds) A. Gulati, Y. Zhou, J. Huang, A. Tal & R. Juneja, 299-358. Singapore: Springer. Tönnies, F. 1988 [1887]. Community and society (trans. C.P. Loomis). New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. Tylor, E.B. 1878. Researches into the early history of mankind and the development of civilization. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Ufer, U. & A. Hausstein 2021. Anthropology of and for innovation. In Handbook on alternative theories of innovation (eds) B. Godin, G. Gaglio & D. Vinck, 334-53. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Watson, J.B. 1943. How the Hopi classify their food. Plateau , 49-52. Welz, G. 2003. The cultural swirl: anthropological perspectives on innovation. Global Networks , 255-70. Wilf, E. 2014a. Semiotic dimensions of creativity. Annual Review of Anthropology , 397-412. 2014b. School for cool: the academic jazz program and the paradox of institutionalized creativity. Chicago: University Press. 2019. Creativity on demand: the dilemmas of innovation in an accelerated age. Chicago: University Press. Williams, S. 2018. How Israel became the startup nation having the 3rd most companies on the Nasdaq. Seeking Alpha, 27 February. https://seekingalpha.com/article/-how-israel-became-startup-nationrd-companies-on-nasdaq. Wilson, T. 2014. Borders. In A companion to urban anthropology (ed.) D.M. Nonini, 103-19. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Yeshua-Katz, D. & D. Efrat-Treister 2021. ‘Together in the tech trenches’: a view of Israel’s innovation culture. Innovation , 337-53. Yin, X., J. Chen & J. Li 2022. Rural innovation system: revitalize the countryside for a sustainable development. Journal of Rural Studies , 471-8. Pépinières de création : observations sur l’innovation au-delà du monde urbain Résumé L’innovation est généralement associée à la création de quelque chose de nouveau et à la croissance économique, et souvent aussi à la modernité et au lieu social principal de celle-ci, « la grande ville ». On peut donc trouver incongru d’associer innovation et ruralité. Sur la base de recherches ethnographiques dans le milieu des hautes technologies en Israël, cet article analyse des centres d’innovation qui se trouvent principalement dans des kibboutzim du nord et du sud du pays, montrant comment ils juxtaposent l’éthos ultramoderniste et individualiste de l’acteur créatif et une notion plus communautaire de la vie sociale. Ce que les auteurs observent dans ces lieux n’est pas simplement une imitation de l’innovation « urbaine » : la communauté exerce une forte influence et les connaissances locales sont mises à contribution pour concevoir des produits et services technologiquement innovants. On peut ainsi, en examinant ce qui se passe en dehors des centres urbains, se faire une image plus complète et nuancée de l’interaction entre l’innovation et la société au sens large. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Cutting at the edge 19 Limor Samimian-Darash is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Federmann School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has studied the topic of preparedness and future risks and uncertainties in health and security, and more recently has focused on scenarios as imagination and uncertainty-based techniques. She is the author of Modes of uncertainty: anthropological cases (with Paul Rabinow; University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Uncertainty by design: preparing for the future with scenario technology (Cornell University Press, 2022). Federmann School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus , Jerusalem, Israel. Limor.darash@mail.huji.ac.il Amit Sheniak is a research fellow at the Cyber Security Research Center (HCSRC) and the Federmann School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is as an adjacent professor at the Tel Aviv University international programme for security and diplomacy and the Department of Asian Studies. His research explores the social and political context and effect of emerging and disruptive technologies and technological innovation processes. Cyber Security Research Center (HCSRC) and the Federmann School of Public Policy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus , Jerusalem, Israel. Amitsheniak@gmail.com Nir Rotem is a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research explores global knowledge dynamics, the exchange of global norms, and contemporary contestations over liberal scripts. He also focuses on the science of science and the construction of scientific knowledge. The Leonard Davis Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus , Jerusalem, Israel. Nir.rotem@mail.huji.ac.il Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © 2023 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. 14679655, 0, Downloaded from https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.14062 by Cochrane Israel, Wiley Online Library on [21/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 20 Limor Samimian-Darash, Amit Sheniak & Nir Rotem

Log In

Cutting at the edge: observations on innovation beyond the urban

Cutting at the edge: observations on innovation beyond the urban

Related Papers

RELATED PAPERS