Santa Fe Institute

Working Group

January 25, 2013 - January 26, 2013
Collins Conference Room

Innovation in agriculture, technology and social and economical practices and institutions, among other areas, has made possible our current society, yet unbridled innovation in every domain has also produced our current unsustainable situation. However, while our society pushes us towards more and more rapid innovation, we lack a general theory of innovation in biological, technological or other social and cultural systems, and have developed little understanding of how innovation has influenced the evolution of biological and cultural systems.  Indeed, most studies of innovation, whether in the origin of new clades of organisms, in the development of new technologies, or in the construction of new social systems and institutions, are primarily individual accounts or case studies.

We propose to bring together a group of people who are studying innovation in two major domains: biology and society. In both areas we need to view invention and innovation 'ex ante', as a process that does not have any predictable outcomes (and can therefore not be studied 'ex post'). In both, from a systemic perspective, innovation could be described as 'self-invention' - as innovation originates and is driven by internal dynamics rather than by external events or processes. In both, there is a starting point (genes and development in the biological realm, ideas and existing technology in the social), but many factors influence the course of invention and innovation, so that the outcome cannot be precisely predicted.

In recent months, we have identified convergence between the theories and hypotheses developed to study these phenomena in both biology and societies, and we would like to explore these systematically in order to see what both communities can learn from each other. In biology, we will more specifically look at the origin of evolutionary novelties through genomics and comparative developmental biology, but also at the success (or failure) of these novelties through ecology and evolutionary dynamics. In society, we will look at technological, economic and scientific change and how the dynamics of knowledge shape the dynamics of society and vice versa.

We have identified a number of common themes between these two domains;

·      Repeated patterns in the history of change

·      how innovation processes themselves change over time (2^nd order dynamics)

·      the role of internal vs. external drivers of change

·      niche construction,  and negative and positive feedbacks in the innovation process

·      the respective roles of supply-push and demand-pull

·      the role of public goods

·      multi-level selection and inheritance

·      and the role of diversity in innovation.

SFI Host: Doug Erwin

• * SFI community lectures are free, open, & accessible to the public.
• * Seminars & colloquia are geared for scientists but free & open to the interested public.
• * All other SFI events are by invitation only.
• * Note: We are unable to accommodate members of the public for SFI's limited lunch service; you're welcome to bring your own.