Abstract
This entry addresses invention from five different perspectives: (i) definition of the term, (ii) mechanisms underlying invention processes, (iii) (pre-)history of human inventions, (iv) intellectual property protection vs open innovation, and (v) case studies of great inventors. Regarding the definition, an invention is the outcome of a creative process taking place within a technological milieu, which is recognized as successful in terms of its effectiveness as an original technology. In the process of invention, a technological possibility becomes realized. Inventions are distinct from either discovery or innovation. In human creative processes, seven mechanisms of invention can be observed, yielding characteristic outcomes: (1) basic inventions, (2) invention branches, (3) invention combinations, (4) invention toolkits, (5) invention exaptations, (6) invention values, and (7) game-changing inventions. The development of humanity has been strongly shaped by inventions ever since early stone tools and the conception of agriculture. An “explosion of creativity” has been associated with Homo sapiens, and inventions in all fields of human endeavor have followed suit, engendering an exponential growth of cumulative culture. This culture development emerges essentially through a reuse of previous inventions, their revision, amendment and rededication. In sociocultural terms, humans have increasingly regulated processes of invention and invention-reuse through concepts such as intellectual property, patents, open innovation and licensing methods. Finally, three case studies of great inventors are considered: Edison, Marconi, and Montessori, next to a discussion of human invention processes as collaborative endeavors.
References
Altman, A., & Mesoudi, A. (2019). Understanding agriculture within the frameworks of cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, and cultural niche construction. Human Ecology, 47(4), 483–497.
Arnold, J. E. (1959/2016). Creative engineering. In W. J. Clancey (Ed.), Creative engineering: Promoting innovation by thinking differently (pp. 59–150). Stanford Digital Repository. http://purl.stanford.edu/jb100vs5745 (Original manuscript 1959).
Corazza, G. E. (2016). Potential originality and effectiveness: The dynamic definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 28(3), 258–267.
Corazza, G. E. (2019). The dynamic universal creativity process. In R. A. Beghetto & G. E. Corazza (Eds.), Dynamic perspectives on creativity: New directions for theory, research, and practice in education (pp. 297–319). Cham: Springer.
Corazza, G. E. (2020). Dynamic creative process. In M. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of creativity (Vol. 1, 3rd ed., pp. 400–405). New York: Elsevier/Academic Press.
Corazza, G. E. & Agnoli, S. (2018). The creative process in science and engineering. In The creative process (pp. 155–180). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Corazza, G. E., & Lubart, T. (2020). The big bang of originality and effectiveness: A dynamic creativity framework and its application to scientific missions. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2472.
Dean, L. G., Vale, G. L., Laland, K. N., Flynn, E., & Kendal, R. L. (2014). Human cumulative culture: a comparative perspective. Biological Reviews, 89(2), 284–301.
Derex, M., & Boyd, R. (2016). Partial connectivity increases cultural accumulation within groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(11), 2982–2987.
Enquist, M., Ghirlanda, S., Jarrick, A., & Wachtmeister, C. A. (2008). Why does human culture increase exponentially? Theoretical Population Biology, 74(1), 46–55.
Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982). Exaptation-a missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8, 4–15.
Harmand, S., Lewis, J. E., Feibel, C. S., Lepre, C. J., Prat, S., Lenoble, A., et al. (2015). 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature, 521(7552), 310–315.
Kaufman, A. B., & Kaufman, J. C. (2015). Animal creativity and innovation. London: Academic.
Kolodny, O., Creanza, N., & Feldman, M. W. (2015). Evolution in leaps: The punctuated accumulation and loss of cultural innovations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(49), E6762–E6769.
Kolodny, O., Creanza, N., & Feldman, M. W. (2016). Game-changing innovations: How culture can change the parameters of its own evolution and induce abrupt cultural shifts. PLoS Computational Biology, 12(12), e1005302.
Kuhn, T. S. (1962/1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago press.
Kuhn, S. L. (2012). Emergent patterns of creativity and innovation in early technologies. In Developments in quaternary sciences (Vol. 16, pp. 69–87). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Lehman, H. C. (1947). The exponential increase of man’s cultural output. Social Forces, 25(3), 281–290.
Metzger, A., & Bartels, M. (2018). Wirksamkeit und Schutzumfang von Pflanzenpatenten. Auswirkungen der Regel 28 Abs. 2 EPÜAO. Zeitschrift fuer Geistiges Eigentum/Intellectual Property Journal, 10(2), 123–161.
Rhodes, M. (1961). An analysis of creativity. The Phi Delta Kappan, 42(7), 305–310.
Stout, D. (2011). Stone toolmaking and the evolution of human culture and cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567), 1050–1059.
von Thienen, J. P. A., Meinel, C., & Corazza, G. E. (2017). A short theory of failure. Electronic colloquium on design thinking research, 17, 1–5.
von Thienen, J. P. A., Kolodny, O., & Meinel, C. (in press). Neurodesign: The biology, psychology and engineering of creative thinking and innovation. In N. Rezaei (Ed.), Thinking: Bioengineering of science and art. Springer Nature.
Wills, I. (2007). Instrumentalizing failure: Edison’s invention of the carbon microphone. Annals of Science, 64, 383–409.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Corazza, G.E., von Thienen, J.P.A. (2021). Invention. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_14-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_14-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98390-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98390-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences