Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Feb 13, 2010; 5:31pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Sources-of-Innovation-tp4566136p4567049.html
It is probably the case that mockery ... particularly self mockery.... is
the enemy of innovation.
n
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
> [Original Message]
> From: Pamela McCorduck <
[hidden email]>
> To: <
[hidden email]>; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 2/13/2010 10:31:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Sources of Innovation
>
>
> On Feb 13, 2010, at 12:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> > What an interesting question!
> >
> > Getting to an answer requires setting aside ALL ideology and doing a
> > comparative study, across history and national boundaries, on the
> > phenomenon of technological leadership.
> >
> > Who knows, for instance, how the internet was developed? By Al
> > Gore over
> > a latte, right! That's top down.
>
> By a handful of visionary guys at ARPA in the 1960s who were left
> alone to do it or fail. Failure was always a possibility.
> > Do the following span some dimension of
> > interest:
> >
> > Manhattan project
>
> Very much top down as a project, though inspired by a small group of
> scientists who worried what might be happening in Germany.
>
> > Lanl's work on Energy
> > NSF 's call for proposals on, say, Dynamical Systems.
>
> A response to what was originally a very bottom up phenomenon (if you
> consider scientists the bottom of anything).
>
> > Ordinary NSF Research Grants
>
> Widely thought to be status quo stuff. Peer review by people who've
> already tried that and "know" it can't be done.
>
> > The human genome project
>
> A topdown event until Craig Venter said, I can do it faster, better,
> cheaper. And did.
>
> > Ordinary professors fooling around in their laboratories.
>
> Those days are much attenuated, if they're not gone. The amount of
> time it takes to raise research money is getting like raising money in
> politics. Jobs are fewer, so there's enormous pressure to achieve
> tenure.
>
> In short, I don't think there's any one answer as to what encourages
> innovation, but there are several, and some of them are pretty
> obvious. A lot of work has been done on human networking--Silicon
> Valley thrived on bright people rubbing up together in bars after
> work, at PTA meetings, at whatever. Ditto Route 128. A culture that
> doesn't frown on risk, which means you can fail, pick yourself up,
> dust yourself off, and start all over again.
>
> We certainly know what discourages innovation, and it's squatting on
> our heads right now.
>
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