The July 2006 issue of Wired had an article entitled What Kind of Genius are You. The short summary is that there are two types of innovators –- those who peak early (CONCEPTUALISTS) and those who bloom late (EXPERIMENTALISTS). I don’t buy this argument, nor do I agree with those that argue “you better innovate by some young age or else”.
Here is an alternative innovation hypothesis:
The human brain’s compression algorithm is pattern recognition. It’s a shortcut whereby the use of patterns allows us to rapidly make decisions rather than storing every bit of data and running a complete analytical process for every decision. When confronted with new data, our brain checks for patterns and fits new data into existing patterns. New data often feels like old data, because our brain processes patterns so quickly.
This process allows us to efficiently go about our daily business. Unfortunately, bad patterns get stored alongside good patterns. To paraphrase Richard Feynman, innovation is identifying bad patterns and replacing them with good patterns through the scientific process.
We acquire wisdom (patterns) with age. Young people lack the wealth of wisdom that they will have in old age, but they also lack the biases of years of accumulated bad patterns. So while I believe that anyone can innovate, you must have an open mind and question everything at any age. Ignoring patterns, therefore, is easier to do when you don’t have as many (when you’re young), so it’s no surprise in a probabilistic sense that young people are innovators more often than older people.
But innovation is possible at any age. Question everything. And then question everything again. It’s not easy, but it’s the key to innovation.
Next up, The Idea, Part II: Flint for the brain.
4 Comments
June 15, 2008 at 3:42 pm
[...] in a model? I try to come up with at least one problem each day, which isn’t hard since I question everything. I then use one or more of the methods below to solve the problem/s I have identified. [...]
June 15, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Have you read Jeff Hawkins “On Intelligence”? Besides being a fascinating read on how the Palm founder got into studying brain function, I found that it enabled me to almost think in the third person. Hawkins argues how intelligence is largely a measure of how well the brain predicts an outcome based on a set of inputs. The problem, however, is that this prediction model is based on reinforced learning habits, which gives people such phenomena as “writer’s block”: the harder you think, the less creative you tend to be.
Stuck on a problem? Discuss with someone else, play a videogame, do just about anything different to allow your brain to approach the problem differently.
June 16, 2008 at 4:48 am
Maybe it’s pattern recognition for the sake of (or as the means of) generalization. It’s been biologically useful to miss the leaves for the trees, and the trees for the forest.
Spending time in Berkeley, for example, has been known to contribute to the occasional breakdown of the brain’s generalization mechanism; you can spend quite some time investigating the wonder of the tiny details of a flower petal. As entertaining as this may be, it generally isn’t evolutionarily useful.
July 9, 2008 at 6:47 am
[...] Luboš Louženský volně navazuje sérii tipů pro startupy, opět inspirován Mikem Speiserem. [...]
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