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

该INSPIRE奖的部分资金来自社会、行为和经济科学局行为和认知科学部的感知、行动和认知计划和社会心理学计划，以及计算机和信息科学与工程局信息和智能系统司的以人为中心的计算计划。集体智慧的概念--即许多互动的个人能够产生比单个个人更好的想法、见解、解决办法和决定--是现代社会许多机构的一项基本原则，包括选举、议会、理事会、自由市场和新闻自由。直到最近，这种集体智慧只能通过选举和市场等大规模非结构化机制，或通过立法机构、委员会、董事会和小组等高度结构化和互动但规模较小的机制来利用。随着互联网、万维网和社交网络技术的出现，这种模式发生了变化。现在，大量不同的、地理上相距遥远的个人可以以结构化的方式进行互动，而且几乎不需要付出任何代价。这为创新和创造力打开了巨大的可能性，但这些可能性在很大程度上仍未实现。造成这种情况的一个主要原因是缺乏对人类网络集体创新的系统科学理解。目前的项目通过结合几个学科的方法来解决这个问题，汇集了一群拥有社会心理学、认知科学、计算机科学、工程学和网络理论专业知识的独特研究人员。这项研究的基本原则是，理解自然的人类创新需要实验室和实地研究的协调结合，仅靠这两项研究是不够的。将利用对创新人的网络(研究学者和工程师社区)的实地研究，通过数据挖掘和智能分析方法来确定创新的自然模式。然后，实验室实验将在受控条件下验证和验证这些模式。因此，通过大规模实地调查和仔细的实验相结合，调查人员将制定更好的衡量创新的指标，并找到帮助群体和个人更具创新性的方法。最重要的是，这个项目将阐明网络中个人的连通性如何促进或抑制创新，从而产生使从企业到社交网络的人际网络更具创新性的建议。最近的研究表明，创新速度必须呈指数级增长，才能维持不断增长和城市化的全球社会。虽然拟议的研究将侧重于特定领域，但其产生的方法将在制定有利于创新的政策方面为组织和政府提供广泛的信息。在当今快速发展、竞争激烈的世界，这种政策很可能成为科学、技术和地缘政治领导地位的主要决定因素。

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.