4 Principles for the Innovative

Lessons from the very first case study

Source: Wharton

1. The Most Basic Question

1. Creative innovations usually arise from being fiercely anti-disciplinary.

2. The best way to think about the process of innovation is to track the evolution of an idea.

2. Fuzzy Hierarchies for Ideas

3. A great deal of innovation and creativity resides in the process of how the intentions of idea-labels can be progressively clarified.

3. Ideas from the Stone Age

4. Ideas endure over time within the hierarchies that they belong to. They morph with different labels, but they seldom extinguish without a trace.

Commit to thinking anti-disciplinarily about your ideas (1) and you will naturally think of the many labels of fuzzy sets and hierarchies to which they could belong and how the intentions of those labels might then be clarified to yield new insights (3). Think about your innovations as the natural evolution of a stream of ideas (2), feeling free to draw inspiration from its antecedents, both those that are near relatives in the hierarchy as well as those that are most distant (4).

Source: The Met

4. The First Case Study: Paleo-Innovation

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Social scientist interested in the economics of innovation. Part-time author. Full-time blockchain explorer.

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Prateek Goorha

Social scientist interested in the economics of innovation. Part-time author. Full-time blockchain explorer.