deep freedom 329It is not enough to cooperate; it is also necessary to innovate. Like
the facility for cooperation, the facility for innovation has both a
moral and a material aspect. Th e ability to innovate in or ga ni za tion
and ideas as well as in technologies soon overrides the size of the eco-
nomic surplus over current consumption as the main constraint on
economic growth. It is an imperative central to every realm of practi-
cal activity, from administration to warfare. It is as well a call to com-
bine people, resources, and machines in ways that step over the limits
imposed by established assumptions and arrangements. It uses the
transformation of nature as an incitement to the self- transformation
of humanity.
Innovation requires cooperation. Every step in a pro cess of innova-
tion requires cooperative activity, both to develop the innovation and
to implement it. However, every innovation also jeopardizes cooperation
because it threatens to disturb the vested rights and the settled expecta-
tions to which an established cooperative regime gives rise.
Consider the simple case of a technological innovation. It will bene-
fi t some segments of the labor force of a fi rm or of a sector and threaten
others, given the present technical division of labor and the framework
of rights, expectations, and practices in which it is embedded. Conse-
quently, tension and confl ict are likely to ensue, fi rst over its introduc-
tion, and then over its distributive consequences. A similar consequence
results, with increasing force and expanding scope, as we move from
technological to or gan i za tion al innovation.
Th e extent to which the requirements of cooperation and innovation
contradict each other vary according to the arrangements and practices
of society. One cooperative regime may diff er from another in the mea-
sure in which it is conducive to innovation and moderates the tension
between the need to cooperate and the need to innovate.
Th e single most important condition for success in the eff ort to the
reconciliation of these two imperatives is that the security of the indi-
vidual in a haven of protected vital interests and endowments be com-
bined with the enhanced plasticity of the surrounding social and eco-
nomic space. It is a dialectical movement: something is protected, the
better to open up a great deal else to experiment and change.
Consider, again, the familiar example of the Scandinavian and Dutch
labor- market reforms of the late twentieth and early twenty- fi rst centu-
ries, and imagine that these reforms went further than they in fact did.