Innovation as Search on a Space of Possibilities: Constructed or Discovered? Metaphorical Device or Analytical Construct?

Abstract.  One of the most widely used descriptions for the process of innovation in the social and biological sciences is that of innovation as resulting from a search process in a space of combinatorial possibilities. Yet rendering such search spaces visible, analyzing their topology, obtaining the necessary data and identifying the agents searching the hypothesized spaces all remain very difficult challenges. These challenges combine to render talk of “innovation as search” highly metaphorical. The working group meeting will bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines (biology, economics, engineering, management science, archaeology, anthropology, physics, mathematics) who have seriously engaged, theoretically and empirically, with the concept of “innovation as search” in order to  assess  just how useful the concept has been, and whether a general and formal framework of innovation as search can be built. Among the specific questions to be considered by the working group are: (a) what search spaces have been formally constructed (or identified) in the biological and social sciences? (b) are topological features of the relevant spaces in different disciplines similar? (c) are different search spaces similarly searched? (d) how are the spaces constructed/generated? (d) is a theory of novelty in effect a theory of search space construction and/or discovery?