Social Innovation Theory
Just two months ago the tech industry celebrated the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. Now, before you run off saying “Oh no, not another Moore’s Law article”, this is not an article about Moore’s Law. Whenever a memorial event like that comes through, we can use it as an encouragement to pondering something. So, I was reading through the various articles and views on the matter usually thinking about my own interpretation of it or, better yet, trying to find an application for the principles or theories in my own life.
On that note, I think I have found something interesting…or not. And that’s what I want to dive into here. Is there a linkage between the social engagement of people and the acceleration of innovation? Gordon Moore observed transistor density was doubling. He made a graph and made a projection. If we look back in time to the origin of modern social connectivity via technical networks (circa 2002…I am talking modern here so don’t hate), the ever increasing social connectivity of our world and the corresponding impact on innovation, does it not seem that these are related or correlated?
In Moore’s Law, the discussion is about the observed increase in the density of the transistors (doubling) every two years. The observation was made first and then the “Law” was proposed. So, in similar fashion, I will make an observation, then make a proposal.
Observation: Innovation is accelerated by the interaction of individuals OR the rapid sharing of information between individuals with knowledge needed to break down barriers or roadblocks allowing innovation to accelerate. In other words, concentrated knowledge is breaking down and access knowledge has replaced it.
Proposition: As social connectivity increases, so will innovation because the innovators will be able to access “anyone” that can assist in the solution. Innovation and the process of innovation always required the interaction of people and information. Social networks are both, by definition.
Result: Legacy innovators, institutional innovators, and concentrated innovations will disappear in favor of distributed access innovations.
If Moore’s Law reached its limit today, the pace of innovation would continue to accelerate. Why? Because we are in an era of Social Innovation where an individual’s ability to innovate by tapping into an enormous pool of contributing individuals accelerates the transfer of knowledge which is the path to innovation. The new model is what I am calling “Social Innovation Theory”. (By the way, I picked this name because I didn’t find anyone presenting similar views using such a name. Henceforth, we have a new Theory. Creative, huh?) Innovation accelerates as more people are technically connected to each other, as well as the data they produce or disseminate. It is quite interesting that we are currently in a period of societal innovations where value is given to innovations with cultural impact vs. technical difficulty. No surprise really, when an individual innovator has access to so many people who are able to offer responses to the question, “What do you need?” The answer isn’t “a faster processor.”
First, lets take a look at innovation through history. Here we go…
For most of history, innovation has progressed very slowly. By innovation, I am willing to lump all manner of societal or technical or scientific improvements into a single bucket. The archeological and historical record supports a gradual and linear path upon which innovation rests. Some innovations were societal. Rome had innovations in conquest, building and systems; the Greeks developed “innovative thought and culture”. Other innovations were individual constructs and pursuits. Think Michelangelo, da Vinci, Brunelleschi. Many of the innovations were stair-stepped, big events, like Gutenberg’s printing press. But most were very subtle and generational. (I point out the printing press btw because it is an innovation in information distribution.) What about John Locke? Didn’t it take us a few thousand years to get to his societal innovation?
The industrial age introduced the beginnings of market based innovation, or what I will call industrial innovation. This is innovation ordered by profit. Generally, institutional profit. Human culture had innovated itself to a point where individuals could collect concentrations of insight (people), gather raw materials (stuff), and build and improve and perfect. Collectives were not so strong in this industrial age so the profit accrued to the industrialist or organization/corporation directly. In a vast number of cases, “discoveries” in the pursuit of this style of industrial innovation were often accidental and themselves led to new branches of innovation. Wars produced some incredible innovations. Here again though, these new paths were pursued by new industrialists capable of surrounding themselves with the talent (people equaling hidden knowledge encapsulated in the talent) and stuff. The rise of Intellectual Property (IP) is borne out of this era because the extracted innovation (IP) was the hard fought bi-product of putting all of these talents together while fighting off the interlopers looking to take it away. Some of you may see where we are going.
Across the 19th and 20th centuries its hard to argue against the position that this was the Golden/Global Age of Industrial Innovation. Humans went from the horse to the moon. Saw incredible advances in medicine, sciences and math (and killing). These innovations or advancements were almost entirely formed in industrial settings requiring enormous budgets, large collections of people and, very often, secretive or isolated work. (I include Universities in this collection of industrialists too). In other words, during this period, if you had enough money, or were a government, you could concentrate people (by force or with funds) who carried knowledge. And by combining these human bio-masses with a specific knowledge set, you could produce something novel, unique and innovative by encouraging the combination of these knowledge sets. You owned the information assets, the people and the documents they created. We were really in an age of consolidated intelligence underpinning industrial innovation.
At last, here we are. The age of Social Innovation and we are emerging (or maybe we have already emerged) from the age of industrial innovation. It is no longer sufficient to entice humans into a room, captivate them with funds (or free food) or even a big problem and expect that you have captured all of the top intelligence capable of solving that problem. Modern, Social Innovation has no fence, four-walls or IP boundaries. There are no boundaries on insight. Insight is as close as anyone to whom you can connect. Open source software is one of the finest, early examples of the power of Social Innovation. Each person wanted the outcome and experts literally “got together” and created code. It is realistic to believe that such an outcome, where thousands of [software] developers could co-create anywhere in the world, would be impossible before the modern technical connectivity of networks, oddly where the networks were created by the industrialists. These early open source pursuits were not pure Social Innovations because most of these contributors knew each other already. They were known and therefore trusted. Modern social trusts use different mechanics. These early examples are good because they use the network to connect, just like a Social Innovator.
Just take a look at what the modern industrialists are trying to formalize with so-called “open innovation” models. Open Innovation is both a recognition of and response to the new reality, but these are not sufficient because their motive is not to transform, but to sustain. In fact, most industrialists look at Social Innovation with disdain. They cannot believe such inconsequential insights are perceived as valuable. They overlook the new definition of value and consequence. In a world where social connectivity is the currency, social or cultural value is the only thing that matters.
New innovators are connecting to information and people at an astounding rate and en masse. These connections are literally connecting the “innovation dots”. For example, most young people do not use calendars. Why? Because they simply ask their social network “whats happening now”, and bammo, they get dozens of responses. Modern contextual solutions are bringing answers before they are even asked. Imagine what happens when this group tries to solve a major problem. How are they going to behave? Are they going to go into a room and sequester themselves with a team, staring at a whiteboard? No way. They are going to approach their network.
This means that any individual’s ability to innovate will absolutely be related to their social network in some way. The effectiveness of one’s ability will be based upon a new set of criteria. Setting aside “desire to innovate” as one of these let us look at the others. Do I know the formula? No way. But I do know that innovation will accelerate and it will be led by those who see the vision and go to their network for insight and cultural impact.
