From creativity to innovation and the role of competition networks: a cancer inspired two-step evolutionary agent-based model

Abstract

ABSTRACT Inspired by the evolutionary dynamics of cancer, an agent-based model for creativity-innovation transition process is proposed. In this analogy, cells are considered as agents (e.g., companies or individual innovators) which are interacting with each other through a competitive interaction network; cancer represents the innovation and the creativity-innovation process is considered to be analogous to the necessary mutations needed within a cell to reach the cancerous state. In this process, agents move from doing business as usual to being creative and then finally innovative. The results show that in an industry with less frequent innovations, innovation emerges faster in structures with local connections. By moving towards more frequent innovations, structures with global and random connections show to be more effective. The outputs provide insights for policy-makers to assess different strategies to facilitate innovativeness for different types of industries. The model also provides a basis to further study the creativity-innovation process.