What drives innovation in mankind?

Travelling back in history, on stepping into the era of ape-man, we would be able to witness our ancestor, belonging to the genus “homo”, hunting vigorously for his very survival. Little did he know that his genus after thousands of years would conquer the entire planet and would go even beyond! Upon exploring every era, from the origin of first life, till the present, we can understand that the driving force behind every species knowingly or unknowingly is for him to grow, live and extend his generation. Human beings are not exceptional from this, each of his desires and pleasures encompasses this drive. One can define this drive as the thirst for growth, survival and reproduction. However, the thing that makes human to stand superior over other species( or we call so) is his ability to modify the existing thing to serve a varied purpose or create a new one as a product of his cognition. More precisely, we could define it as his ability to innovate.

Stone-tipped throwing spears is perhaps the first innovation that mankind ever witnessed. In today’s world, we have plenty of sources, references, models, technologies and varied needs for innovation to flourish. But, how did such a magnificent idea of something, when thrown kills a prey, pop up in the ape-man’s head without the luxury of any of the things mentioned above? To add, it is certainly not easy to imagine and design a thing that did not exist before. Verily, the urge for survival is the sole reason behind the invention of perfectly shaped spears. Moving a few millenniums forward, the period when the earth was undergoing rapid fluctuation in climate, natural selection must have favoured the survival of homo sapiens- our near ancestor, driving our other ancestors out of existence. The ability of sapiens to co-operate flexibly in larger groups is his greatest strength and it gave rise to the congregation of bigger brains for bigger inventions and innovations to happen in the successive eras.

The above-stated things are how our history describes our mighty advantageous features. Well, have these features always been beneficial to mankind? Not at all. The fictional stories and entities that convinced people to co-operate and live in groups have also created conflicts amongst us and individual imagination has helped in widening these rifts. Religion, money, nationalism etc. come under these fictional entities. Mankind has witnessed terrible wars which have been written with blood all over the pages of history, where a greater portion of the fighting was triggered by these entities.

There is a term called “psychological egoism”, which states that humans are always motivated by self-interest and selfishness. Even for the one arguing on his altruistic act, deep down his action, he is struggling to achieve his esteemed motive i.e being altruistic or maybe he’s intended to attain a benefit from his act which is an egoism. There is nothing wrong to get driven by self-interest unless it doesn’t affect others. But, people’s self-interests have become more intertwined with the above-mentioned entities such as religion and nationalism and a chaos arises as and when a group argues claiming their opinions and beliefs to be superior to that of other groups, who in turn disagree with them. Yet, surprisingly, most of the successful innovations happening in this planet occur because of an individual’s self-interest and drive to innovate and benefit from it, rather than his willingness to improve the lives of mankind. So, it is good that egoism also somehow serves as a cause for innovation.

The cause for innovation changed from the thrive for a man’s survival to his thrive to prove him the best in the upcoming periods. Yet, what is the thing that fuels his creativity? Imagination and creativity wouldn’t have evolved in him if he had been locked down in a cage for ages. Nature has indeed shaped his cognition. The inspiration from nature fuelled his brain and shaped his cognitive ability. Upon his keen observation on nature, he manipulated the available natural resources and derived raw materials for his creation. Then with the advent of technology, he started mimicking the natural processes of the earth. Though the term Bio-mimicry was coined only in the 20th century, the act of mimicking the natural processes of the earth has been in existence from periods of BCE. The stories of how a bird watching hobby of an engineer helped him design a bullet train, how a man who got inspired by a termite mound went on to revolutionise architecture, the emergence of the umbrella by mimicking the lotus leaf, every such innovation inspired from nature is indeed inspiring!

Wistfully, innovations from India in the modern era are still countable and isn’t showing signs of expanding. Is this because our brains are not capable? If it is so, then how behind every flourishing innovation happening in the world, has at least one brain of the Indian origin ( not necessarily Indian). The issue arises from the way our minds are trained. The goal is not filling our brains with theories and facts but to provide it a pipeline for the ideas to flow through it. The education sector indeed plays a crucial part in this subject by burdening our minds with lots of stuff and hindering the brain’s creativity.

We are all from a common ancestor and we still retain the genes of creative thinking and the cognitive ability to innovate. By kindling our needs and self-interest, and with the aid of nature, the creativity in us flourishes. Somehow, with the origin of the human race on this planet, innovation bloomed along with us and has enabled us to conquer the entire planet and we’ve taken our inventions beyond the planet.

Innovation is an outcome of precious intangible resources bestowed upon humankind. Though the creative ability of man is also serving a threat to his kind, without it, our lives would be pretty boring. Remember! A single flake of creativity arising in the human brain has the power to set ablaze the whole world or lit the lamp for showering light on humanity. The way we harness this energy is up to us!