The third course of the specialization CREATING INNOVATION will teach you what is at the core of all innovations that solve complex problems and how to foster methods to make big breakthroughs possible. It advances your knowledge of your own field by teaching you to look at it in new ways. CREATING INNOVATION is constructed in the following way: Week I. “What is Innovation?” – What lies at the core of all innovations. Week II. “The Evolution of Human Creativity” – How humans developed the ability to innovate and think creatively. Week III. “Innovation in a Complex Global Network” – How innovations emerge from human networks. Week IV. “Planning Innovation” – How organisations seek out and create the right conditions for new breakthroughs. Week V. “Market Innovation” – What makes innovations more likely to emerge in a market setting. Week VI. “Innovation in the Anthropocene” – How innovations are crucial to meet the problems of the 21st century.
Chemical Innovation
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來自 Macquarie University 的課程
Creating Innovation
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從本節課中
What is Innovation?
Welcome to Course 3 of the specialisation! In this module we will look at what innovation is, in the broadest possible context, and how the innovations humans devise to solve complex problems are the continuation of a much bigger and more critical trend.
與講師見面
David BakerAssociate Lecturer
Big History Institute
David ChristianProfessor
Big History Institute
Shawn RossAssociate Professor
Big History Institute
The big question for
this segment is what is the role of emergent properties in chemistry?
How do new elements and molecules emerge and innovate in the inanimate universe?
[MUSIC]
What chemical elements make up a water molecule?
We're probably all familiar, H2O, 2 hydrogen atoms, 1 oxygen.
These are the building blocks,
bonded together to form a new structure, a higher form of complexity.
What is a basic property of water?
Water is, well, wet, but where did this property come from?
Take the pieces of the puzzle apart.
Is hydrogen wet, is oxygen wet?
No, can you water a plant by spraying some hydrogen gas,
followed by some oxygen gas at it?
Indeed, not very effectively.
In fact, oxygen is the plant's waste product.
Why is it the combination of two hydrogen atoms and
one oxygen atom into a single molecular structure seems to unlock new qualities?
How about another one, salt.
It is composed of sodium chloride.
What does salt taste like?
It tastes, well, salty, but does chlorine taste salty?
Would you put it on your French fries?
No, would you want to lick pure sodium?
Not unless you wanted to burn off your tongue.
Yet, when you put sodium and chlorine together,
you get salt, a very useful, and, historically, very important resource.
These are examples of emergent properties in chemistry.
When complex structures form, the combination of their building blocks
can exhibit properties that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Out of the combination of a collection of ingredients, new things,
as they say, emerge.
The same goes for the combination of cells that make up your brain, and
the consciousness that results.
Put movable metal type and the mechanics of a wine press together, and
you get Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press.
From the ability to produce an unheard amount of literature for
society to benefit from, a scientific revolution results.
Each emergent property tends to interact still more with other emergent properties
in a cascade of change.
Put hydrogen and oxygen together, and you get water.
Water was a friendly liquid in which the first organic chemicals formed on Earth,
evolved, and produced all life, which is still so
dependent on water in various ways.
All of these emergent properties are forms of blind innovation in the universe, and
they all belong to a continuum.
Take again the simplest of all atoms,
hydrogen, which is the most abundant kind of atomic matter in the universe.
Without the intercession of stars, no higher forms of complexity, like planets,
life, or culture, would have arisen.
One proton paired with one electron, forming hydrogen,
was all we needed to lay the foundations for a structure that grows higher and
higher, with each new level being more intricately built than the one before.
It is often said that the recipe for human is to take some hydrogen and
wait a few billion years.
Hey, presto, you just cooked up a chartered accountant.
From dense collections of hydrogen, you have stars, which forged,
in their bellies, all the elements up to iron.
And the largest stars exploded in super novae, producing still heavier elements,
until we arrived at the 92 naturally occurring elements in our universe.
These came together, further still, to produce all sorts of molecular structures.
And throughout our history, humans have deliberately manipulated their properties,
rather than just leaving it to blind innovation, and
have produced amazing effects that are life-enhancing, new chemicals for
industry, clothing, agriculture, and medical treatments.
Carbon is forged in the belly of a star, by no means a very complex element,
compared to, say, gold or uranium.
It still clocks in with six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons.
It forms the basis for life on Earth.
It also is one of the most pliable of the elements, forming the basis of 90
million out of the 100 million molecular combinations that we know to exist.
A molecule is even more complex, since it is a string of elements together, and
can exhibit new and astounding properties.
It is the next layer of complexity above the atomic bedrock.
When we get to structures as intricate as life, one DNA molecule
has a couple hundred billion atoms strung together In a highly complex process.
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.
[MUSIC]
