The origins of innovation

Trying to understand how our innovation capacity works inevitably leads to the question of how that capacity evolved in the first place: Where does innovation come from?

The storyline that ties our innovation capacity back to the origins of innovation is long and winding. To untangle its twists and turns, I suggest that we walk through that storyline twice, but in two opposite directions.

For the first pass, we will start in the here and now to work our way backwards all the way to the beginning of time, to the Big Bang. For the second leg of the journey, we will turn around and walk forward again to return to our present day reality.

With this circular itenerary in mind, the upcoming series of short posts will stop at the following waypoints:

• Our Innovation Engine
• Our Means for Innovation
• Our Needs for Innovation
• Birth & Death
• Combination & Decomposition
• Change – The Battle of Order against Entropy
• The Inanimate World
• The Animate World
• The Human World
• How We Got to Where We Are

This is the first in a series of short posts on the origins of innovation.