Satellite workshop of CCS 2016 on "Determinants of Creativity and Innovation in Science, Art and Technology"

The aim of the workshop is to gather scientists from many different disciplines (physics, mathematics, computer science, biology, social sciences, arts, etc.) to address fundamental questions about how people express their creativity and innovate both at the individual and collective levels

Innovations are key factors in the evolution of human societies, since they represent the primary motor to explore new solutions in ever-changing and unpredictable environments. New technological artefacts, scientific discoveries, new social and cultural structures, are very often triggered by mutated external conditions.

Unfortunately the detailed mechanisms through which humans and societies express their creativity and innovate are largely unknown and no comprehensive mathematical framework has been proposed so far. Creative solutions, novelties and innovation share an important feature: often, innovative events do not happen by chance, rather they seem to be triggered by some previous novelty or innovation. In studies of biological, technological, and cultural evolution, it has been hypothesized that one innovation can lay the groundwork for another by creating fresh opportunities.

In our daily lives, a similar process may account for why one new thing so often leads to another. This idea has been beautifully summarized by the notion of adjacent possible introduced by Stuart Kauffman. In this picture the advance into the adjacent possible is the driving force for correlating innovative events, and novelties are produced through an exploration of a space – physical, conceptual, technological or biological – that enlarges itself whenever one reaches a point of the space never touched before.

The workshop will represent the opportunity to assess where we stand by investigating the determinants of innovation processes and their evolution, progressing in their mathematical modelling, understanding their function and identifying the most thriving contexts (institutions, social organizations, business models, etc.) for creativity and innovation. The workshop will also feature a set of interactive installations and web-based games aimed at engaging participants in “creative” activities (see for instance https://goo.gl/FM4acs).

The Workshop is organized by the Kreyon Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and supported by Sapienza University of Rome, ISI Foundation and CNR-Institute for Complex Systems.