Optimal Learning Patterns for Creativity Generation in a Field

Creativity is a fundamental value of a free society. Creativity flourishes when individuals are enabled to pursue individual independent paths of inquiry, exploration, and creative development (Jonathan S. Feinstein 2006; Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont and Jeremy C. Stein 2005). In such an environment personal intuition and knowledge is developed in unique and creative ways that leads to cultural and economic development – the progress of civilization (Friedrich A. Hayek 1960; John Stuart Mill 1859). Much scholarship in economics has focused on innovation as the basis for economic growth. An important tradition characterizes innovation and technological change as arising from a process in which draws are made from an underlying distribution of productivity improvements or potential new technologies (for example see Robert Evenson and Yoam Kislev 1976 and Samuel Kortum 1997). But there has been little work directed towards formal modeling of the actual creative process through which innovations arise (one example is Martin Weitzman 1998). In this paper I present a model that opens a way for proceeding on this topic. Individuals come to be creative through a process of creative development, exploring creative interests and gathering elements – data, ideas, models, possibilities, techniques then finding ways to combine and reconfigure these elements into new creative forms. I present a simple model of this process: Individuals choose what to learn in a field from the viewpoint of making the highest value contribution they can through novel combinations of elements. The model joins rational decision theory with formal knowledge representation. This combination has great potential for describing the rich patterns of individual exploration and learning that are the basis for creativity.