Following the Nature article discussed previously, this is a 2010 paper looking into innovation in the US based on patent data (1970-2005). It already depicts that invention (used here interchangeably with innovation) exhibits diminishing returns. An interesting distinction is made between two different approaches to innovation.

One understanding of innovation is that it is driven by incentives and the supply of knowledge capital producing either constant or increasing returns. This view is connected to economy and markets and therefore innovators are expected to provide solutions corresponding to price signals. In this paradigm, “private efforts at knowledge making increase the overall stock.”

Second (contrary and also what the authors ultimately believe) understanding is that innovation is “subject to the evolutionary dynamics of all living systems” and thus not constant. It is not only reliant on incentives and knowledge capital but also on constraints and it grows increasingly complex and costly and reaches diminishing returns; higher expenditures produce fewer innovations. Whereas early research plucks the lowest fruit and that specialized questions require more time and money to resolve, and more preparation.

The authors claim that “the stories that we tell about our future assume that innovation will allow us to continue our way of life in the face of climate change, resource depletion and other major problems.” However, solar power and wind energy investments are found to be producing fewer returns; innovation in these fields is shrinking. So do all research challenges where pioneering research has already depleted the broadly applicable questions and research is now required to more specialized fields. Were we to continue to produce innovation in one field, then we would have to allocate more resources to this field and fewer resources to others.

References

Strumsky, D., Lobo, J. & Tainter J.A. (2010). Complexity and the Productivity f Innovation. In Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res. 27, 496-509. DOI:10.1002/sres.1057

(photo taken at the recent Rotterdam biennale)

Authors of “Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time,” recently published on Nature, argue that disruptiveness in papers and patents is declining as well as word diversity and combinatorial novelty. At the same time, declining disruptiveness does not preclude individual disruptive works. A substantive shift is undergoing in science and technology, they argue, that might appear as the slowing of innovative activity. Authors attribute their findings to a reliance on a narrower set of existing knowledge; this benefits individual careers but not scientific progress. Scholars, say the authors, may be encouraged to read widely and be given time to get familiar with the ever growing knowledge frontier.

Reading the paper I also thought disruptiveness is undermined by narrowing down slices of knowledge and yes I also think this is product of pursuing research for the sake of individual career paths. There are many more of course, like the radical increase of PhD research produced and published (and through that, the promotion of individuality in doing research), higher competition between institutions, lack of time for keeping up with all that is being simultaneously developed, you name it. I do think however that technological innovation in particular, often suffers from lack of relevance probably because it has been the case that people attributed more value on the power of technology itself rather than what drives it. The effects of Modernism and the siloing of knowledge production is now becoming increasingly more apparent causing, what the authors call, the discrepancy between the availability of knowledge and its use. Which is probably where we stand at the moment: too far ahead in the specific and too weak in making it relevant for others.

That said, it is no wonder that the wow effect of the very specific technology produced does little good to us in the midst of the overall crises we live in. The magnitude of our problems together with our incapacity to produce credible answers for them shows that maybe technology alone cannot be the answer for everything. And maybe that is why innovation is ceasing or slowing down: we are at crossroads; we are at that awkward moment in time that we’ve lost sight of the others. So, how do we move forward? The paper’s authors ask for broader research and more time. They also oddly claim that the philosophy of science believes in the potential of knowledge accumulated. Maybe so, but then again very Popper-proper. Maybe it is Kuhn’s change of paradigm what we are really, really, desperately in need of. Maybe then the new disruptive will be what makes sense for the many.