Invention/Re-invention

Collective Invention

This paper argues that many new production techniques have been developed by a process called 'collective invention'. When firms collectively invent, they make available to their competitors the results of new plant designs so that their competitors can incorporate extensions of tliose designs into new facilities they build. The paper analyses the implications of this behavior for the rate and ...

the invention of capitalism

The structure of invention

This paper explores the process by which radically novel technologies – ones such as radar, the turbojet, or the polymerase chain reaction – come into being. It shows that this process – “invention” – has a certain logical structure common to all cases. Invention is a process of linking some purpose or need with an effect that can be exploited to satisfy it. It may begin with a purpose or need ...

Simulating Product Invention Using Inventsim Simulating Product Invention Using Inventsim

This chapter describes a novel simulation model (InventSim) of the process of product invention. Invention is conceptualized as a process of directed search on a landscape of product design possibilities, by a population of profit-seeking inventors. The simulator embeds a number of real-world search heuristics of inventors, including anchoring, election, thought experiments, fitness sharing, im...

Opportunistic Enterprises in Invention

This paper identifies goal handling processes that begin to account for the kind of processes involved in invention. We identify new goal properties and mechanisms for processing goals, as well as means of integrating opportunism, deliberation, and social interaction into goal/plan processes. We focus on enterprise goals, which extend traditional design goals and knowledge goals to address sign...