[Mark Sheridan]

I am actually reading about innovation in history in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel"

He argues that we have an "heroic theory of invention" where influences of new inventions are ignored to favor the genius of the inventor.

To quote Jared Diamond:
"The hero (inventor) customarily credited with the invention followed previous inventors who had similar aims and had already produced designs, working models, or commercial successful models. Edison's famous "invention" of the incandescent light bulb on the night of October 21,1879, improved on many other incandescent light bulbs patented by other inventors between 1841 and 1878." Diamond, Jared (1999). guns, germs and steel: pg.245

He goes on to list numerous examples:
Watt's steam engine was influenced by Newcomen's. The Wright brothers were influenced by Otto Lilienthal and many others. Eli Whitney's cotton gin was an update of a several thousand year old device.

I think there is vast historic and modern evidence to argue that having more influences produces more and better innovations. I hear this a lot but could not determine the original author, "that innovation does not occur in vacuums."

Jared Diamond furthermore explains that all our innovations for writing required iteration of previous concepts. To create a written language from scratch is partially impossible without referencing previous languages. Even then, writing is a descendent of drawing and many symbols were derived from a simple drawing.

i think creativity and innovation are feed by necessity and predecessors. An idea by itself is weak, it lacks perspective and context for its ability to fill a necessity. With two ideas, now that can be compared, now one idea can be superior, necessity can be defined more clearly or even change. Thus more ideas cannot stifle creativity, even when most are not your own. Even inferior ideas can inspire greater ones.

One can have too many ideas and must either to cope with it or whittle it down to manageable pieces. One must have a means to compare ideas (QFD, prototypes, design spec and etc). I find my challenges are more related to honing my teams collective output into a singular vision.

If students can only perceive the 3 day robots and cannot envision new ideas. i am sorry but I don't think blocking influences will help them be more creative. It will make it worse. if making your students creative is a priority, than I think they must learn how to use their influences to inspire ideas of their own, no matter the source.