As living beings, humans share the properties that characterise the animate world, including birth and death, growth and ageing, and agency.

Against our best effort, the order that we seek to establish does not last forever; as if a 'hidden force of anti-order' would systematically undermine all our endeavours. This 'force' takes many forms as it harnesses a variety of mechanisms.

The innovation engine is the centrepiece of our innovation capacity, yet we have more means at our disposal – ranging from basic, like variation and combination, to sophisticated, such as birth and growth.

At the core of our capacity for innovation works an engine that blends three different fuels: imagination, intent, and agency.

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?