Abstract
Innovation—the combination of invention and social learning—can empower species to invade new niches via cultural adaptation. Social learning has typically been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of traditions and thus culture. Consequently, invention has been relatively understudied outside the human lineage—despite being the source of new traditions. This neglect leaves basic questions unanswered: what factors promote the creation of new ideas and practices? What affects their spread or loss? We critically review the existing literature, focusing on four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent?), individuals (what factors make some individuals more likely to be inventors?), ecological contexts (what aspects of the environment make invention or transmission more likely?), and populations (what features of relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions?). We aim to inspire new research by highlighting theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of innovation, focusing primarily on inventions in non-humans. Understanding the role of invention and innovation in the history of life requires a well-developed theoretical framework (which embraces cognitive processes) and a taxonomically broad, cross-species dataset that explicitly investigates inventions and their transmission. We outline such an agenda here.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.
Highlights
During rapid environmental change, the success of hominid populations has depended on their ability to devise new fitness-enhancing behaviours that exploit novel aspects of the environment and are socially transmitted to conspecifics [1]
After reviewing what is currently known about invention, and identifying major knowledge gaps and methodological flaws, we propose in §3 a set of promising research directions that could transform our understanding of invention and innovation in the natural world
We use the term ‘innovation’ to refer to inventions that succeed in diffusing widely through agroup to become stable characteristics of thatgroup.2. Another source of definitional confusion is that the word ‘innovation’ is used to describe both process and product
Summary
The success of hominid populations has depended on their ability to devise new fitness-enhancing behaviours that exploit novel aspects of the environment and are socially transmitted to conspecifics [1]. We use the term ‘innovation’ to refer to inventions that succeed in diffusing widely through a (sub)group to become stable characteristics of that (sub)group.2 Another source of definitional confusion is that the word ‘innovation’ is used to describe both process (i.e. the transmission and establishment of an invention) and product (i.e. a behaviour that has been acquired by multiple members of a population through initial, individual invention and subsequent spread via social learning). It excludes behaviours that occur naturally at certain points in development for all individuals, given particular environmental circumstances.3 It does include (i) novel behaviours produced by processes other than insight learning, (ii) behaviours that are creative but apparently useless or costly, and (iii) behaviours that are likely accidental the first time they are performed. We favour an inductive approach that starts with a broad definition of invention and attempts to explain patterns through some combination of cognitive process, life history, and ecological context
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