Is innovation slowing down?
Smart phones. Autonomous cars. Genetic manipulation. Each week seems to bring a new discovery or knowledge. The possibilities seem more limitless than ever. However, there are those who say that human achievement is slowing down; and in fact, it should be slowed down.
The view from America in 2017
Technology is booming in America. On a popular news website, a biomedical company called Draper describes its plan to turn a dragonfly into a living drone. Draper’s project aims to graft a small solar-powered backpack onto a dragonfly and then connect that backpack to the insect’s nerve cord. This allows an operator to steer the dragonfly. Draper envisions the ability to turn dragonflies into pollination machines for farmers and surveillance devices for intelligence agencies.
Elsewhere, in a multi-story underground laboratory, researchers are fighting malaria by using genetic manipulation. Funded by the Gates Foundation, these researchers are experimenting with a species of mosquito more responsible for transmitting the disease. The researcher sits in front of a microscope and places a needle on small mosquito embryos. The needle introduces DNA that will render malaria-transmitting mosquitoes infertile. If this particular mosquito population can be eliminated, it will also eliminate the main vehicle of malaria transmission.
On earth, scientists using the Hubble telescope have determined that the universe is expanding much faster than originally thought. Through the flicker of distant quasars, the observations provide new information about our origins and hint at discoveries to come.
Through Patent Applications: Is Innovation Really Slowing Down?
Despite these and countless other examples of discovery, some still say that innovation is slowing down. Many have criticized these claims. Bill Gates himself has called such arguments “stupid.” And, for one thing, it’s easy to see Gates’s rationale.
A popular argument that innovation is slowing is based on the number of patent applications filed per year. Patents have increased in the years between 2011 and 2013; And although patentable inventions continue to appear in the millions each year, the growth rate in 2014 was surprisingly slower. The growth rate in 2015 recovered somewhat, but did not come close to previous years. From this perspective, innovation does not correspond to previous years.
However, patent applications are expensive, time consuming and uncertain. There are many reasons to give them up. In some cases, patents are not even the proper protection mechanism for a discovery. As a result, counting only patent applications excludes certain areas of innovation. For example, following the legal case of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, the commercial software development industry, has relied on trademarks more than patents in recent years.
Patent approval can also be affected by bureaucratic moods. If a high percentage of patent approvals occurs in one year, the US Patent and Trade Office may examine applications more closely in the next year to ensure high quality of patents. As such, the percentage of approvals can vary widely from year to year. Anticipating a higher standard can result in fewer patent applications filed.
When these external factors are considered, the use of patent applications as a metric for innovation appears unreliable and potentially one-dimensional.
Tennis, diminishing returns and lottery curves
The law of diminishing returns refers to the point at which the level of profit obtained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. This has broad implications, not only in the realm of economics, but also in other areas of human fulfillment. Professional tennis is an accessible example.
Roger Federer is a successful tennis player. Over a twenty-year career, he has amassed more than $ 101 million in earnings. Meanwhile, according to Forbes writer Miguel Morales, the 92nd-ranked tennis player in 2013 (named Michael Russell) made only about $ 75,000 after expenses. That’s still decent money, and many would undoubtedly prefer a job as the 92nd best tennis player in the world over a cubicle.
In other words, there is a great financial motivation to win tennis tournaments. And as such, many find themselves doing just that.
Both Federer and Russell have dedicated their lives to tennis. They both work on it throughout the year. Both “strive”. But at a certain point, trying harder and the financial incentive showed less payoff for Federer than Russell. Something else made Federer a better player and helped him avoid the law of diminishing returns.
In his book “Human Realization”, Charles Murray coined the phrase Lokta curve to visualize this phenomenon. The better tennis player you are, the fewer partners you have. While many players move in and out of the top twenty rankings, the first two or three rankings are usually in the hands of the same people.
Over time, within this sample of the “elite of the elite”, you can see the incomparable separated from the simply excellent. Dozens of players over the years have held the number one spot for at least a week. Far fewer have kept it for more than 100 weeks. Only one, Roger Federer, has held the rank for more than 300 weeks.
If you were to map this distribution as a line through a coordinate plane, it would form a Lokta curve: a high number for the total number of players who held the No. 1 rank for a week, curving towards the least who did. above 100 weeks. At the other end of the plane is Federer alone with his 300-week reign.
The Finite Universe
Tennis can always accommodate more Roger Federers because the participants are deadly and fickle. The laws of nature are not. Fields that build on accumulated knowledge will eventually solve your questions, given enough time.
Recalling his work in particle physics, Richard Feynman commented on how lucky he had been to live when he did. He compared it to the discovery of America, an event that can only happen once. It was a fitting metaphor. The power of the atom had been intuited and sought from the writings of Lucretius, almost two thousand years before. And during Feynman’s lifetime, he participated in the project that successfully split the atom in Los Alamos.
As great minds take their place on the Lotka curve, your efforts will answer many questions that touch on the fundamental truths of nature. Some of those efforts will raise new questions; others will resolve the issue. In the case of the latter, it can be argued that the innovation work in that field is done. In this situation, you can see that innovation is really slowing down.
And yet.
The essence of innovation is a new perception. As such, the matter is never completely closed. Anatomy, a field long thought to be explored, surprised everyone in early 2017. With new research and the use of new tools, the human body gained a new organ near the stomach: the mesentery. The symbolism is appropriate. Discovered at the core of the human body, we can see unexplored territories that remain inside and outside, and with it: opportunity for innovation.