Though innovation seems to be happening at breakneck speed, there is nothing abrupt about it. Changes are small & cumulative.[6] New ideas are based on old ideas, on recombinations of them & on extending them to new domains.[7] This does not make those ideas any less important. An illustrative example is the lightbulb, the history of which is one of incremental improvement. [...]
Diffusion of innovations have been shown to normally follow S-shaped cumulative distribution curves, with a very slow uptake followed by rapid spread followed by a slowing down as the innovation nears ubiquity.[8] Joseph Henrich has shown that these curves, which are drawn from real-life data, fit models where innovations are adopted based on their intrinsic attributes (as opposed to models in which individuals proceed by trial-&-error, for example).[9] In other words, in the real world, it seems, innovations spread in the main because people choose to adopt them based on their qualities. And which qualities are those? Everett Rogers, an innovation theorist who coined the term “early adopter”, identified five essential ones: an innovation must (1) have a relative advantage over previous ideas; (2) be compatible such that it can be used within existing systems; (3) be simple such that it is easy to understand & use; (4) be testable such that it can be experimented with; & (5) be observable such that its advantage is visible to others.[10]
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The rate of cultural innovation generally is correlated with population size.[13] That makes sense: a country of a million will naturally produce more innovations than a country of one. Simulations indicate that innovation produces far more value in large population groups.[14] [...]
But there is also another quality that greatly affects the population-level rate of innovation. That quality is not necessity, which the adage calls the mother of invention; companies cut R&D costs when times are tough, not the other way around.[15] Neither is it a handful of geniuses making earth-shattering individual contributions.[16] No, what greatly affects a population’s rate of innovation is its interconnectedness, in other words how widely ideas, information & tools are shared.[17] In a culture that is deeply interconnected, where information is widely shared, innovations are observable & shared tools & standards mean that innovations are also more likely to be compatible. Most importantly, interconnectedness provides each individual with a large pool of ideas from which they can select the most attractive to modify, recombine, extend & spread in turn.
