A thread on innovation theory pointing out some connections that have been clear in my head for years, but I’m realizing are not even visible to many people interested in the topic. I’m always surprised when I have to point these things out and pass along these references.
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In the history of innovation revolutions, after the pioneer stage but before the institutional phase, you usually have a “blue-collar innovator mutual-influence network”, BCIMIN, basically consisting of people dropping in on each other’s workspaces and freely stealing tricks.
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Here I overload “blue-collar innovator” to mean anyone producing stuff using an emerging medium of any sort, not just physical making. So early bloggers or first cohort of bands in a new music scene count. Sorry if that offends your class sensibilities but it’s the best term.
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Out of necessity they have to work on/around deficiencies of medium and get hands dirty. Typically they are much more deeply knowledgeable about their tools than later institutional era non-innovator blue-collar types, who will also work at the tool level, but at stable maturity.
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Often they may seem “overqualified” for the tool level. Early computing pioneers like Turing, von Neumann, and Richard Hamming were often mathematicians who knew vastly more math than modern programmers ever learn. If formally credentialed, they may look like they’re slumming it.
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Interesting datapoint: much of the hands-on early work on drones and driverless cars was done at university labs by people getting Masters or PhD degrees. They did everything from soldering to writing advanced math papers. But today a high-school kid can work with the tech.
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But credentials are not necessary for a BCIMIN. Only the impedance mismatch between the depth of knowledge and experience being brought to bear on the work, and the seemingly “beneath them” level of hands-on-work and mucking about at the tool level.
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I’ve seen credentialed, decorated types literally turn up their noses with “this is contractor/intern/newbie grunt work”. When a respected, high-reputation person says something like that, I immediately flip the bozobit and look skeptically at their supposed great reputation.
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