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Innovation

October 29 2020


I claim that the likelihood of making progress in science or philosophy is = Education + Exposure to diverse domains + Time to spend on a problem + IQ (or other intelligence measure) + Resources/Tools available + Community

As more and more people in the word gain access to each of these, the barrier to entry lowers and the bar for making a considerable progress increases. Further, there is a likely a finite set of general solutions or mathematical principles that could be applied to any given problem space. Further progress in those areas is likely going to come through incremental optimizations. Add to that an overall growing population and the chances that any individual will be able to create a successful and popularly adopted innovation shrink.

Outsized gains from new innovations or optimizations will likely accrue to the people and organizations that organize the people, resources, time and opportunities under a singular outcome vector.

Said differently, the more problems that an organization that has shown a general propensity to solve general problems takes on, the more likely they will be to succeed at solving those problems and thus will grow further their scope. This can hold, so long as they do not outstrip the overhead capacity to carry on their basic functions. The system grows so long as the "vascular system" and the energetic inputs can grow along with and increasing scope.

Copyright (c) 2020 Andrew Kemendo