THE NATURE OF INNOVATION

How Innovation emerges

Innovation is the combining and recombining of ideas, when people meet and exchange ideas. Although one would wish to start innovation by ‘pushing a button’ or even deliberately design innovation, it is not that easy.
Innovation seldom happens top-down planned but it comes bottom-up emerged from the interaction of ordinary people. It is the result of human action, not of human design, created by trial and error.[1]
[1] Matt Ridley, 2015, the Evolution of Everything. How new ideas emerge.

The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence.
Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up.
Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan.
Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature—these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia. Ridley demolishes the arguments for design and effectively makes the case for evolution in the universe, morality, genes, the economy, culture, technology, the mind, personality, population, education, history, government, God, money, and the future.
As compelling as it is controversial, authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley’s stunning perspective will revolutionize the way we think about our world and how it works.

Although Matt Ridley's work sometimes has been judged controversial - his statements fuel the battle between evolutionist and creationists - his findings about the bottom-up nature of innovations has convinced us at LDpe that the only way to influence the innovative climate in organisations or societies is to stimulate dialogue and interaction between people.

Innovation Trends

In the video Ridley explains his ideas about  bottom-up development.


Another book that has inspired us is the bestseller book Humanification by Christian Kromme, explaining the wave pattern of disruptive innovations that emerge with increasing frequency.
In partnership with Christian Kromme, LDpe currently
designs the process Gearing Up Innovation & Change

Imagine being able to spot the next big trend, or being able to predict the next big wave of change. Imagine having a code that gives you the power to invent, predict or harness the next big technology. Humanification is going to help you unlock the DNA of innovation itself, so you can apply it to your life, your business and your community. 
Through a series of stories, research and personal insights, the author reveals how he came to see the world from a totally new perspective. This new vantage point allowed him to uncover a unique wave pattern.
Incredibly that wave pattern turned out to be a blueprint for just about every disruptive technology breakthrough. Christian Kromme also made another remarkable breakthrough. He discovered that our manmade technology follows exactly the same evolutionary steps as life itself.By reading this book you will learn to see how the world works at a biological level, a technological level, and a humanity level. You will come to understand how each level is linked, and that knowledge will reveal remarkable new insights into the future. This is a truly remarkable book that no entrepreneur, leader or policy maker can afford to miss. This book shows how technology unites humanity into one big organism. This new insight will change the way you look at technology and its effect on us all us all forever.

Order a free copy of the e-book Humanification by clicking on the picture

Innovation is a bottom-up process. It is the result of human action, not of human design, created by trial and error, hardly ever the result of conscious design.
Disruptive Innovation, though, is not totally unpredictable. It emerges in a challenging wave-pattern, that follows the same evolutionary steps as life itself.