Second-Order Innovation: modelling the context of invention: lights on Italy in the 1960s

The aim of this contribution is to consider Italy during the 1960s in order to model contemporary innovation dynamics. The purpose is not only for collective memory retrieval but primarily for de-constructing the innovation circuit and re-constructing it by means of a more sophisticated and detailed frame. A glossary of eigenvalues will be suggested through the concepts of garbo, cenacolo and pollinator; moreover, this glossary will be tested in two case studies: those of Olivetti and Bialetti. Starting from a simpler and circumscribed innovation regime, the final objective is to supply theoretical tools and support policy design in the actual “dark age”, in which the message is drowned in a sea of noise and where people begin to confuse hoaxes with signals, thus polluting communication and forcing a causal interpretation of casual relationships.