Zeitgeist
Etymology
Zeit + Geist
Literally: "Time Spirit"
The societal thinking or spirit of the time...
Zeitgeist is an invisible agent, force, or dominating characteristics of a given epoch.
The term is usually associated with Georg W. F. Hegel - contrasting with Hegel's use of Volksgeist "national spirit" and Weltgeist "world-spirit".
However, its coinage and popularization preceded Hegel, and were mostly due to Herder and Goethe.
Other philosophers who were associated with such concepts include Spencer and Voltaire.
Contemporary use of the term refers to a schema of fashions or fads that prescribes what is considered to be acceptable or tasteful for an era.
Hegel in "Phenomenology of the Spirit" (1807) uses both Weltgeist and Volksgeist, but prefers the phrase Geist der Zeiten "spirit of the times" over the compound Zeitgeist.
The Hegelian concept is in contrast to the Great Man theory propounded by Thomas Carlyle, which sees history as the result of the actions of heroes and geniuses.
Contradistinct Hegel perceived such "great men", specifically Napoleon, as the "embodiment of the world-spirit" (Die Weltseele zu Pferde "the world-soul on horseback").
Carlyle stresses that leaders do not become leaders by fate or accident.
Instead, these individuals possess characteristics of great leaders and these characteristics allow them to obtain positions of power.
Great Man theory and zeitgeist theory may be included in two main areas of thought in psychology.
For instance, Great Man theory is very similar to the trait approach.
Trait researchers are interested in identifying the various personality traits that underline human behaviors such as conformity, leadership, or other social behaviors.
Thus, they agree that leadership is primarily a quality of an individual and that some people are pre-dispositioned to be a leader whereas others are born to follow these leaders.
In contrast, situationist researchers believe that social behavior is a product of society.
That is, social influence is what determines human behaviors. Therefore, situationism is of the same opinion as zeitgeist theory—leaders are created from the social environment and are molded from the situation.
The concept of Zeitgeist also relates to the sociological tradition that stems from Émile Durkheim and recently developed into social capital theory as exemplified by the work of Patrick Hunout.
These two perspectives have been combined to create what is known as the interactional approach to leadership.
This approach asserts that leadership is developed through the mixing of personality traits and the situation.
Further, this approach was expressed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin by the equation B = f(P, E) where behavior (B) is a function (f) of the person (P) and the environment (E).
Executives, venture capitalists, journalists, and authors have argued that the idea of a zeitgeist is useful in understanding the emergence of industries, simultaneous invention, and evaluating the relative value of innovations.
Malcolm Gladwell argued in his book, "Outliers" , that entrepreneurs who succeeded often share similar characteristics—early personal or significant exposure to knowledge and skills in the early stages of a nascent industry.
He proposed that the timing of involvement in an industry, and often in sports as well, affected the probability of success.
In Silicon Valley, a number of people (Peter Thiel, Alistair Davidson, Mac Levchin, Nicholas G. Carr, Vinod Khosla) have argued that much innovation has been shaped by easy access to the Internet, open source software, component technologies for both hardware and software (e.g., software libraries, software as a service), and the ability to reach narrow markets across a global market.
In a Zeitgeist market, the number of new entrants is high, differentiation in high-value products (the strongest predictor of new product success) is more difficult to achieve, and business models emphasizing service and solution over product and process, will enhance success.
Examples include innovation in product experience, legal rights and bundling, privacy rights, and agency - where businesses act on behalf of customers.
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