The Cultural Evolution of Creative Ideas and Social Innovations
We apply complex systems science to the study of social systems and show how a complex-systems-inspired theory of creativity, which is referred to as ‘honing theory’, provides insight into social innovation. We propose that creativity and social innovation are processes of self-organization that yield a lower-entropy state in worldviews, which are self-organizing webs of understanding. This allows us to offer a novel perspective on the evolution of technology, the role of creativity in cultural evolution and the manner in which creativity drives innovation in social systems, such as the economy. We also introduce creative destruction as having metaphoric relevance for a social system transition from entropy to negentropy, and offer a social innovation example addressing economic collapse and resilient reorganization. We conclude that concepts from complex systems theory, and particularly entropy, shed light on both creativity and social innovation and further our understanding of how innovation affects social systems, such as in cultural and economic change.