The Four Laws of Innovation

Article Sidebar

PDF PDF (Castellano)

Main Article Content

José Alberto García Avilés
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7854-3476

This essay puts forth a tetrad of laws of innovation, drawing from the approach of the laws of media originally formulated by Marshall McLuhan in 1977. These four principles are derived from the observation and analysis of innovation processes in various contexts and media. The laws emerge in a simultaneous and cumulative manner throughout the process of implementing innovations in any industry. These laws are formulated through the use of interrogations and manifest as four properties: receptivity, hybridization, transformation, and versatility. The extent and magnitude of the resulting innovation are directly proportional to the degree and intensity of each property.

Keywords
McLuhan, Journalism, Versatility, Transformation, Hybridisation, Responsiveness, Innovation, Laws of innovation

Article Details

How to Cite
García Avilés, José Alberto. “The Four Laws of Innovation”. Hipertext.net, 2025, no. 30, pp. 171-86, doi:10.31009/hipertext.net.2025.i30.11.
Rights
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

(c) José Alberto García Avilés , 2025


Copyright

Author Biography

José Alberto García Avilés

Full professor of Journalism at the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, where he teaches on the Master’s Degree in Innovation in Journalism. He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (New York). He researches journalistic innovation and interactive narratives. He is the author of more than a hundred publications on communication and journalism. His latest book is: Eagles and hummingbirds: Innovative Journalists in Europe (Águilas y colibríes: periodistas innovadores en Europa).

References

Abernathy, W. J. & Clark, K. B. (1985). Innovation: Mapping the winds of creative destruction. Research policy, 14(1), 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-7333(85)90021-6

Antropov, V. & Neklyudova, N. (2021). The concept of innovative receptivity: methodological aspects. En SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 120, p. 02020). EDP Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202112002020

Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovator’s dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Press.

Coakes, E. & Smith, P. (2007). Developing communities of innovation by identifying innovation champions. The Learning Organization, 14(1), 74-85. https://doi.org/10.1108/09696470710718366

Desalegn, E. G., Coelho-Guedes, M. J., Da Silva-Gomes, J. F. & Tebeka, S. M. (2024). Disentangling organizational agility from flexibility, adaptability, and versatility: a systematic review. Future Business Journal, 10(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-024-00405-6

Eriksson, M., Fleischer, R., Johansson, A., Snickars, P. & Vonderau, P. (2019). Spotify teardown: Inside the black box of streaming music. MIT Press.

García-Avilés, J. A., Carvajal-Prieto, M. & Comín, M. (2016). Cómo innovar en periodismo. Entrevistas a 27 profesionales. Diego Marín.

García-Avilés, J. A. (2020). Diffusion of innovation. In The international Encyclopedia of Media Psychology, 1(8). New Jersey: Wiley https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119011071.iemp0137

García-Avilés, J. A. (2024). Cómo se cuenta la historia: Tipología de las narrativas interactivas en el periodismo. Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico, 30(4), 1-20, https://doi.org/10.5209/emp.98652

García-Avilés, J. A., Carvajal-Prieto, M., Arias, F. & De Lara-González, A. (2019). How journalists innovate in the newsroom. Proposing a model of the diffusion of innovations in media outlets. The Journal of Media Innovations, 5(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.5617/jomi.v5i1.3968

Hoffjann, O. (2021). The innovation function of hybridization in public relations. Media and Communication, 9(3), 155-163. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i3.3994

Luhmann, N. (2013). Introduction to Systems Theory. Polity.

Markides, C. (2006). Disruptive innovation: In need of better theory. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 23(1), 19-25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2005.00177.x

McLuhan, M. (1977). Laws of the Media. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 34(2), 173-179.

McLuhan, M. & McLuhan, E. (1988). Laws of Media: The New Science. University of Toronto Press.

McLuhan, M. & McLuhan, E. (2017). The lost tetrads of Marshall McLuhan. New York: OR Books.

Millar, C., Lockett, M. & Ladd, T. (2018). Disruption: Technology, innovation and society. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 129(4), 254-260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2017.10.020

Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. 5th ed. Free Press.

Rowan, D. (2019). Non-Bullshit Innovation: Radical Ideas from the World’s Smartest Minds. Random House.

Scolari, C. (2010). Ecología de los medios. Mapa de un nicho teórico. Quaderns del CAC, 34(13), 17-25.

Scolari, C. (2019). ¿Cómo analizar una interfaz? Documento de trabajo. Versión 1.0. [Personal webpage]. Researchgate.net. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330651740_Como_analizar_una_interfaz

Tidd, J. & Bessant, J., (2020). Managing innovation: integrating technological, market and organizational change. 7ª ed. Wiley.

Wikström, P. & DeFillippi, R. (eds.) (2016). Business innovation and disruption in the music industry. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Zaragoza-Fuster, T. & García-Avilés, J. A. (2018). Desarrollo de la innovación periodística en la televisión pública: el caso del RTVE Lab. Hipertext.net, (17), 11-21. https://doi.org/10.31009/hipertext.net.2018.i17.02

Most read articles by the same author(s)