Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, famously said that “ideas are cheap and abundant; what is of value is the effective placement of those ideas into situations that develop into action.”
Is there so?
While ideas may be abundant, good ones are not so much. At least, not anymore.
A recent study showed that good ideas are growing rarer by the year -dropping by half every thirteen years, to be more precise. “Research effort is rising substantially while research productivity is declining sharply”, explains the researchers. Compared to the 1970s, 18x more researchers are needed to continue its trajectory, with productivity slipping.
But maybe there is another explanation for this phenomenon.
In his book Breakpoint and Beyond, George Land argued that after a certain number of incremental innovations (making modifications to existing ideas), it hits a threshold. While at the beginning of civilization, there was a high level of inventive and exploratory activity, every culture grows within a finite environment.
For Professor David Cropley, PhD, “linear progression” models may mislead us to believe that just by increasing the amount of information or data it is possible to transpose this incremental threshold. Besides, as he explained, linear progression models “also ignore the fact that change is constantly reshaping the problem that the creative solution addresses.”
In other words, as we push the boundaries of knowledge forward, it is becoming increasingly harder to catch up with what we already know and propose something (radically) innovative.
Benjamin Jones refers to this dynamic as the burden of knowledge. In his paper, Jones shows that innovators are both starting their work and peaking later, resulting in lost productivity. For him, there are two reasons for that claim: “First, innovators are not born at the frontier of knowledge; rather, they must initially undertake significant education. Second, the frontier of knowledge shifts over time.”
If that isn’t enough, Jones also found that the age at which notable innovations are achieved is significantly increasing. Over the 20th century, it has risen by 6 years, largely due to the extended education innovators now need to undertake. In 1900, the peak ability to generate a great invention arrived at approximately 30 years old; by 2000, it was nearly 40.
Basically, the more we know, the more the next generation must learn to be able to contribute at the cutting-edge level -which leaves us with less time to do our most meaningful work.
On top of that, as I argued in the last newsletter, if we keep doing only what we know will work, there is little space for novelties. Also, our attention is constantly being diverged from what really matters. It is an ongoing battle.
In conclusion, slowing down productivity may offer us a beneficial solution for this idea shortage. As Cal Newport proposed,
“There are ways to fix the destructive effects of overload culture, but such solutions would have to begin with a reevaluation of knowledge-worker autonomy. Productivity, we must recognize, can never be entirely personal. It must be connected to a system that we can study, analyze, and improve.”
How do you think productivity downtime can affect your current work?