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Phillip Cunio's Commentary:
Innovation
1-8-2004 There is a definition
of "innovation" that goes as follows: Whenever two old ideas meet,
a new idea is formed and that which we call innovation happens.
This, of course, means that innovation gets easier and thus happens faster as time goes by. You happen to smash two old ideas together, idea A and idea B, and out comes idea C. Well, now you can throw idea C together with idea A or idea B to get idea D, or you can go out and bring in idea X from outside and get a whole new productivity chain started. Those of my readers familiar with the tech sector, or with the history of science and engineering since the Renaissance, may be inclined to agree with this model. But it does raise a question. Generating new ideas isn't so hard; just take any two old ones. But . . . from where did the very first two ideas come? They must have been the hardest two to dredge up. And whoever had that very first idea was really onto something. Presumably, nobody even knew what an "idea" was before this mad genius. So what might these first two ideas have been? We would have trouble enough trying to trace all present-day ideas back through their own innovationary births to the very first two, so lets just start at zero. We'll have to go back to caveman times for that. Well, let's ask ourselves about the kinds of ideas a caveman might have had. A very creative caveman. Let's go back to the very beginning. How about fire? That must be a pretty basic idea. And . . . the wheel. The best work of two revolutionary cavegeniuses, from different times and places. Unfortunately, they forgot to invent writing, so we don't really know much about those two mystical thinkers anymore. But let's see where innovation theory might take us. What would a caveman do when the idea of fire met the idea of a wheel? Well, you could put the two together, if the wheel were of wood. Probably that was easier to use than stone anyhow. It would sure make for some interesting recreation. "Thag, look at fire! I send you some!" "Grok, why fire spin? Why fire chase Thag?! What happening? Grok, help! Thag burning!" And then the smart Grok might combine the idea of "wheel" with itself again, and invent the axle. This would probably have been followed later by putting axle with axle to get the cart. Then mayhap, someone will put the old "wheel" with "cart" to get steering. It's only a few steps from there to power windows, ladies and gentlemen. So, even if that whole "Fire-Wheel" thing was a dead end (until someone resurrects it for a medieval siege or a modern-day extreme sport), we can see how many ideas come out of just two original concepts. In conclusion, cavemen led interesting lives. |