In a previous post I elaborated on informality as a necessary condition for ideas to travel en create breakthrough innovations. In this post I will take a closer look at how ideas propagate and thereby classifying two sorts of innovation.

Let me start with the notion of memes. By carefully observing the behaviour of our genes, Richard Dawkins introduced the groundbreaking idea that ideas might evolve and propagate the same way as genes. Genes are the building blocks of human beings and by analogy ideas, which Dawkins called memes, are the building blocks of culture. These memes build into rituals, practices, scriptures, gestures, writings or other imitable social phenomena. The word meme comes from the Greek memetismos, which means ‘something imitated’. Quoting Richard Dawkins in the Selfish Gene:

‘Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so do memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.’

It’s a viral view on the propagation of ideas. Ideas travel from mind to mind, are being used, recombine, fall apart, get lost and father new ideas.

Ideas travel vertically and horizontally

There are essentially two ways for ideas to travel: vertically and horizontally. Vertical ideas are ideas that travel from one generation to another. These ideas are the ones that let traditions, rituals and symbols perpetuate. The act of imitation is from the younger generation that learns from the older. It’s what we call: inheritance. Other ideas spread horizontally and imitate behaviour they see from elsewhere, from other places. It’s how fashion, tunes, cultural artifacts spread. Ideas that once travelled horizontally, become vertical and vice-versa.

Disruptive and incremental innovation

Being the realm of new ideas, innovation also happens in two ways: vertically or horizontally. Vertical innovation builds upon what’s already there. By imitating the old culture and slightly changing the rituals, the codes, innovation happens. It’s the incremental type of innovation. The one that leads to a higher efficiency. On the contrary horizontal innovation comes from the intersection of ideas from different fields (see also my previous post on the Intersection by Frans Johansson). It’s usually more disruptive in nature because the old culture is challenged in a way it is not used to.