Earlier this week I explored the role copying played in the innovation process. It was based upon the inherent reality that little of what is classed as innovation is really unique, but rather something that has already proved its worth elsewhere, being applied in a new way.
A new study published recently by Indiana University provides further grist for the mill. It highlights the role imitation can play in the creative process.
Researchers conducted a virtual problem landscape that allowed them to explore the various facets of social learning (or learning by imitating those around us to you and me). They wanted to test whether people would be creatively better if they had innovative thinkers around them or imitators.
“We thought at first it would be better to have innovators around you,” said IU cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone, Ph.D. “But in our experiments, if people are surrounded by imitators, they actually do better.”
The reason, apparently, is that imitators often make improvements to the things they copy, which can in turn be built upon once more, by both the original innovator, and others.
“This kind of dynamic is found in situations where there are good ideas out there, but it’s really hard for any one individual to find them searching in isolation,” Goldstone said.
“If you’re working in a field like medicine, software development or art, where there are a huge number of ideas with unknown potential, it is often good to be surrounded by imitators.”
They go on to conclude that a culture akin to that of an intellectual magpie is enormously beneficial to a community. They suggest that because problem fields are typically far too large to explore individually, applying collective intelligence to the problem can be incredibly beneficial. It’s an intellectual version of the creative destruction made famous by Joseph Schumpeter.
They highlight this behaviour in practice in the business and technology worlds.
“Think of all the tablets that are out there, mutually copying each others’ innovations. Or consider the way open source software communities work. People make available the software that they spent thousands of hours working on, hoping other people will ‘steal’ it, imitate it, so they then can take advantage of other people’s extensions.”
The study also highlighted a number of interesting strategies deployed by people in addition to imitation. For instance, people were found to be much more likely to imitate solutions that were similar to their own.
What’s more, the longer people participated in the experiment, the less they imitated other participants, yet the better their performances. This led to a lowering of intellectual diversity amongst the group as the experiment progressed, albeit with an improvement in performance.
Overall though, the study provides yet more evidence, should any be required, that opening oneself up intellectually is extremely beneficial, whether that’s on an individual level or an enterprise level. What’s more, you shouldn’t be afraid to build on the work of others when doing so.
Makes sense if you are in a competitive market where you will be copied you will want to come first with new ideas (ie innovate) and keep evolving to stay ahead. If many industries had to compete de facto we'd have much better stuff at a variety of areas.
Basically anything and everything that can lead to innovation will be stopped by the legacy players in whatever industry you want because they fear their loss of control and enormous profits.
Closed source software tends to get a huge money-driven rush of progress, at first. But at soon stagnates. The money driven motive is to eventually get to a state where you sit back and relax and watch the dollars roll in for the almost zero cost of selling duplicated disks or downloads of software.
I have wondered for a while about the "long wave" cycle of innovation. There have been a number of such cycles observed, where there are furious burst of technological innovation, leading eventual consolidation in a few very large companies and something like stagnation.
Most of the great innovations in recent times were imitations made better through better design or product benefits. Think of the iPod, which was basically a nicer design to existing MP3 players. Japanese cars during the 80s and 90s stole huge market shares off US-based carmakers by improving design, fuel efficiency, reliability, etc. Amazon came around with a great model for ecommerce, but it already existed as well. I am sure you could find many other examples proving this point. Nothing wrong with imitation, specially when there is continuous improvement involved in the process.
Great stuff, Adi.
Thanks for the comment Frederic. Despite the value clearly present in 'evolution' rather than 'revolution', society still seems to place a high amount of esteem on those who come up with eureka moments. As organisations however, perhaps a slight reshift in how innovation is perceived is in order.
Thought provoking post, Adi. I think that moments of revolution are so rare and far-between that imitations and modifications are more what have made humans prosper over the centuries. By slowly improving upon revolutionary inventions like the radio, airplanes and the first computers, we've made great strides over the century. Also, all great scientists such as Einstein have been building on the work of other scientists to come up with revolutionary ideas. So in the end imitation also leads to more innovation as well as improvements in past models for an entirely new product sometimes, almost indistinguishable from the original.
Thanks for the comment Gazalla. How does it apply to blogging do you think? Is there a pressure to always come up with something revolutionary, or is there value in building on what others have done?