The Social Structure of Innovation

The relationship between innovation and social ties is fraught with contradictions: we believe in the power of immersed creative work stemming from individual minds, but we also acknowledge the importance of influence and inspiration that comes from sociability. While we have high hopes that digital and global connectivity would aid the flow of ideas (and with it, innovation), we also see that more connectivity can bring about groupthink, and an early cessation of exploration. We understand that connectedness will help innovation if we connect across diversity, but doing so often leads to a lack of understanding, conflict, and exclusion. In this chapter it is argued that the most important avenues of understanding the creative impact of our social connections is when we explore how connectedness sparks novel ideas by generative tension. Analysts of innovation networks have placed too much emphasis on diffusion and borrowing, and have had little to say about inventing and generating novel ideas. Using the vocabulary of structural diversity from social network analysis, and diversifying experiences and perspective taking from psychology, the chapter argues that networks contribute to innovation by creating locations of generative tension that help recognize and realize novel ideas.