Innovation Paradigm Replaced

Introduction

Introduction
Innovation is still considered a black art, not a science. Progress a threat, not the hand that feeds us. Overlooked has been the simple fact that without innovation, the planet can perhaps feed only a few million hunter-gathers. With innovation, Earth can provide for a thousand times as many. The difference is merely a different set of ideas.


In the 300,000 years since the dawn of modern man there have been no revolutionary improvements in either the Earth’s material resources or raw human mental capability. The ability to exponentially multiply the population has arisen solely from innovations.

“Human life expectancy was 37 years in 1800. Most humans at that time lived lives dominated by poverty, intense labour, disease, and misfortune. We are immeasurably better off as a result of technology, but there is still a lot of suffering in the world to overcome. We have a moral imperative, therefore, to continue the pursuit of knowledge and of advanced technologies that can continue to overcome human affliction.”
- Ray Kurzweil

If such technologies where dependent on Art why is it that they are so obviously accumulating? Any change must have a cause. The exponential change in technology must be driven by some mechanism that is capable of such growth. Knowledge is the prime, if not the only candidate. Artistic capability is an inherent skill and therefore not qualified to be a candidate process. Inherent skills may develop over evolutionary timescales but not in such a radical way. Innovation skills must be learnt.

This blog attempts to kill the idea that innovation is an art. It explains in both theoretical and practical terms, how the present paradigm of innovation can be replaced.



Navigation
This is a blog about analogy.
It draws connections between analogous products over time. Its purpose is to make product innovation reproducible. The blog connects analogy of the mind, to analogy in product designs. Products designs, by their very existance, contain information that can be traced from natural laws to users. It is this information that lets us form analogies between products. With these new analogies come new products.

The blog is split into three parts - the theory, the practice and supporting information (appendices).
The theory section maintains that all innovation results from a reproducible recombination of existing elements. Knowledge is the route to this reconfiguration. Knowledge is just the reduction of complexity. This blog attempts to reduce creative complexity and in reducing complexity makes things simpler to reproduce.

This process starts in chapter 1 with the acceptance that innovation can be designed rather than stumbled upon. Chapter 2 identifies the continuum through which the innovation will progress by recognising existing patterns and stepping from stone to stone on the ideas of others. These stepping stones of knowledge form the information inheritance of the product (or service!). Tracing the ballistic tracks of new products is the outcome of chapter 2, showing us the overall map for our product innovation.

Chapter 3 and the remaining theory chapters, elucidate the reproducible recombination of existing elements. Analogy is the central theme of this recombination. Chapter 3 explores in some depth how analogy can be used to compare existing patterns and how to harness mental cues in this process.
The remaining theory chapters (4, 5, 6 and 7) look along the continuum at Insights, Constraints, Options Ontology, Taxonomies & Language. Each of these subjects helps align the innovation trajectory more closely with the target. The constraint chapter 6 is particularly important in that it is counter intuitive. The chapter maintains that innovation can be enhanced by the systematic constraints of a well formed train of questioning. By the end of the theory section the reader should be familiar with the map and main concepts of the innovation continuum.

The practical section turns this theory into practice.
Chapters 8 to 11 introduce the "Three Steps to Innovation" technique. We conceptualise, idealise and realise our product using the continuum principles. Following each stage in turn we return the product innovation continuum to its conceptual roots, then its ideal form and finally realise the new product.

Chapter 12 is the appendix to the main source methods. The blog was constructed using the same methods of analogous thinking along the innovation continuum that it proposes, these are some of the analogies used.

posted by Waldo Hitcher @ 3:50 AM