The organic structures to which DNA belongs are even more impressively
structured, requiring a vast amount of building blocks and connections.
The body of an animal is hugely complex,
in comparison to what existed before stars.
A brain has more nodes and connections than anything found in inanimate nature.
Consider further the complex human web formed by a tangled network of
billions of those brains, with their societies, inventions, and
adaptations that can accomplish astounding technological feats.
You begin to understand the pattern of rising complexity
that unites 13.8 billion years of history and all beds of knowledge.
This continuum goes all the way back to the life forms that invent technologies,
the organic molecules that make up the life forms,
the chemical elements that make up the molecules, and
even further, the protons, neutrons, and electrons which come together
to form the emergent properties of a simple chemical element itself.
Going deeper,
we have the emergent properties of quarks when they come together to form a proton.
All of these structures breed traits and
qualities that are far more than the sum of their parts.
And these emergent properties beget more emergent properties.
You might well ask what does all of this inanimate emergent science stuff
have to do with innovation in human society and our own lives?
Well, unlike the universe, the solar system, and life, which came together by
the crashing together of blind ingredients operating under the laws of physics,
we humans have the ability to direct innovation, to direct emergence.
This is because, thanks to our consciousness and our collective learning,
we sit atop one of the most complex systems ever, global society.
With the power to direct innovation, to anticipate and design for
it, it helps if we understand the fundamentals of innovation.
We must seek out different building blocks to combine
in order to create outcomes that are greater than the sum of their parts.
This will go for any innovation or
solution to a complex problem that you can conceive.
You must figure out what the component parts to innovation are,
anticipate its effects, and figure out how to organize,
mobilize, and bring all those variables together to produce the desired results.
Whether the process is blind or directed, the fundamentals are the same.
Regardless of whether you are seeking to invent a new technology,
devise a new policy to a big problem, come up with a business plan that is good for
you and the economy, or come up with a form of literature or
art that will resonate with your audience, you are always engaging in the same thing,
the creation of new emergent properties.
You are engaging in a process that is as old as the universe itself,
but with a little more gusto and advantage than most emergents,
given to you by one very important tool, your mind.
So identify those building blocks and see what emerges.
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