Physics Department, Sapienza University of Rome;
Institute for Scientific Interchange, Torino, Italy; and
Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria
“Novelties, innovation and the adjacent possible”
Abstract:
Creativity and innovation are key elements in many different areas and disciplines since they represent the primary motor to explore new solutions in ever-changing and unpredictable environments. New biological traits and functions, new technological artifacts, new social, linguistic and cultural structures, new meanings, are very often triggered by the mutated external conditions. Unfortunately the detailed mechanisms through which humans, societies and nature express their creativity and innovate are largely unknown. The common intuition that one new thing often leads to another is captured, mathematically, by the notion of adjacent possible, introduced by Stuart Kauffman. Originally introduced in the framework of biology, the adjacent possible metaphor already expanded its scope to include all those things (ideas, linguistic structures, concepts, molecules, genomes, technological artefacts, etc.) that are one step away from what actually exists, and hence can arise from incremental modifications and recombination of existing material. In this talk I’ll present a mathematical framework, describing the expansion of the adjacent possible, whose predictions are borne out in several data sets drawn from social and technological systems. Finally I’ll discuss how games could represent an extraordinary framework toexperimentally investigate basic mechanisms at play whenever we learn, create and innovate. I’ll present a few examples recently developed in the framework of the KREYON project (www.kreyon.net).
Short bio:
Vittorio Loreto is Full Professor of Physics of Complex Systems at Sapienza University and Research Leader at the ISI Foundation in Turin where he coordinates the Information Dynamics group. He recently joined the Faculty of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. His scientific activity is mainly focused on the statistical physics of complex systems. In the last few years he has been active in the fields of granular media, complexity and information theory, complex networks theory, communication and language evolution, social dynamics. He coordinated several project at the EU level among which the project EveryAware (http://www.everyaware.eu), devoted to enhancing environmental awareness in urban contexts using social information technologies. In this framework he has been developing new tools for web-gaming, social computation and learning. He is presently coordinating a Templeton funded project on “Unfolding the dynamics of creativity, novelties and innovation” (www.kreyon.net). He published over 180 papers in internationally refereed journals and chaired several workshops and conferences. He was the vice-chairman of STATPHYS 23, the 23rd International Conference on Statistical Physics.
- Possibilities and Innovations December 3, 2017
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Anna Yu “Possibilities” has been a constant theme in our previous lecture series as many guests categorized it as a source of the origins of their research objects. This week, Professor Vittorio ... - Innovation v. Origins: One and the Same? November 21, 2017
srkohli I entered the seminar room on Tuesday night solely knowing the title of Professor Vittorio Loreto’s lecture, “Novelties, innovation and the adjacent possible.” As an STS major, I was immediately ... - Innovation and Adjacent Possibilities November 6, 2017
cmhall20 The topic of innovation is a very important one, as it relates directly to the future of our world. Finding the pace of innovation is also an important, though very ... - Optimism in Innovation November 5, 2017
Phillip Kim On October 24th lecturer professor Vittorio Loreto came to lecture about innovation. Loreto talked about how to calculate the rate of innovation. Loreto’s thoughts on innovation was that the rate ... - Adjacent Possibilities October 31, 2017
Jonathan Taylor Whenever someone uses the phrase “adjacent possibility” to refer to something that may not be possible now but will be given the realization of one intermediate possibility, I’m inclined to ... - Technology and Innovation October 31, 2017
ashibata The last two decades remind me the history as one of the periods with a fast growth in technology. Probably also in the next few decades we will experience a ... - The Adjacent Possible October 31, 2017
vjones20 This week, Professor Loreto discussed something I’d never even heard of before. He called it the ‘adjacent possible’. At face value, adjacent possible simply means the space right next to ... - The chicken and the egg: Innovation and Origins. October 29, 2017
Walker Griggs This past week’s lecturer, professor Vittorio Loreto of Università La Sapienza in Roma, struck an interesting chord with me. As someone spanning both the humanities and the STEM in my ... - Vertical vs. Horizontal Innovation October 29, 2017
cmajgaar Being a child born just a few years before the new millennium, my lifetime has coincided with what seems to be the fastest period of growth in technology our world ...