INSPIRE: The Hunting of the Spark: A Systematic Study of Natural Creativity in Human Networks

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This INSPIRE award is partially funded by the Perception, Action, and Cognition Program and the Social Psychology Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and the Human-Centered Computing Program in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. The notion of collective wisdom - that many interacting individuals can produce better ideas, insights, solutions and decisions than a single individual can produce - is a foundational principle for many institutions of modern societies, including elections, parliaments, governing boards, free markets and the free press. Until recently, such collective wisdom could only be harnessed through massive unstructured mechanisms such as elections and markets, or through highly structured and interactive but smaller-scale mechanisms such as legislatures, committees, boards and panels. With the advent of the Internet, the World-Wide Web and social network technology, the paradigm has changed. It is now possible for large numbers of diverse, geographically distant individuals to interact in structured ways and at almost no cost. This has opened up vast possibilities for innovation and creativity, but these possibilities are still largely unrealized. A major reason for this is the lack of a systematic scientific understanding of collective innovation in human networks. The current project addresses this through a combination of methods from several disciplines, bringing together a unique group of researchers with expertise in social psychology, cognitive science, computer science, engineering and network theory.The fundamental principle underlying the research is that an understanding of natural human innovation requires a coordinated combination of laboratory and field studies and that neither is sufficient on its own. Field studies of innovative human networks (communities of research scholars and engineers) will be used to identify natural patterns of innovation through data mining and intelligent analysis methods. Laboratory experiments will then verify and validate these patterns under controlled conditions. Thus, through a combination of large-scale fieldwork and careful experiments, the investigators will develop better metrics for measuring innovation and discover ways to help groups and individuals be more innovative. Most importantly, this project will clarify how the connectivity of individuals in a network acts to boost or suppress innovation, leading to recommendations for making human networks from corporations to social networks more innovative.Recent studies suggest that the rate of innovation must increase exponentially to sustain a growing and urbanizing global society. While the proposed research will focus on specific areas, the methods it generates will inform organizations and governments broadly in developing policies conducive to innovation. In today's fast-moving, highly competitive world, such policies are likely to be a major determinant of scientific, technological and geopolitical leadership.