In this post, we’ll unpack all you need to know about innovation, defining exactly what it is, why it is akin to the evolutionary process, what allows it to thrive and more.
What Is Innovation?
Innovation refers to the process of developing new technologies or methods that allow humans to channel energy in new ways.
The impact of innovation is overestimated in the short-term and underestimated in the long-term.
How It Mirrors The Process Of Natural Selection
The process of innovation mirrors the process of natural selection through recombination.
The same way existing genes combine to create new genes is the same way existing ideas combine to create new ideas.
In this sense, it is not a sudden individual process — it is an incremental collective process. It builds on itself based on what works.
Since it results from combining existing technologies in new ways, this combinatorial nature means that technological progress accelerates as more technologies become available to combine.
Thus, it is also identical to the creative process where existing elements are used to create new elements.
“Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week. Being wrong might hurt you a bit, but being slow will kill you. If you can increase the number of experiments you try from a hundred to a thousand, you dramatically increase the number of innovations you produce.” — Jeff Bezos
All forms of innovation build on what works.
Biological Innovation
Biological innovation must be both conservative (protection) and progressive (growth) because it cannot ever produce a non-functional organism.
How It Thrives
Innovation thrives in environments that encourage the random exchange of information and energy.
The more people that are able to freely trade information and energy in the form of ideas, goods and services, the more innovation there will be. This is why it thrives most in populated places.
Simultaneous independent invention is the rule in nature.
Summary (TL;DR)
Innovation is the process of developing new technologies and methods that allow humans to channel energy in new ways.
The process mirrors that of natural selection. Just like existing genes combine to create new genes, existing ideas combine to create new ideas.
Since it occurs when ideas can reproduce, it thrives where people are most freely and frequently able to exchange ideas.
