What the Ancient Greeks Can Teach Us about Innovation
We’ve got Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Jennifer Doudna. Who needs Aristotle? Reviewing ‘How to Innovate,’ translated by Armand D’Angour
Today we’ve got Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Mary Barra, Jennifer Doudna, and others. So, who needs Aristotle and other dusty throwbacks telling us how to innovate? What could they possibly teach us?
By themselves perhaps less than we might notice, let alone appreciate. But through the efforts of editor and translator
much indeed.
D’Angour, professor of classics at Oxford, starts off How to Innovate with a summary of what Aristotle and the ancients knew about innovation. “The creation of new ideas relies on a few basic principles,” he says, “notably, the adaptation of existing elements, the cross-fertilization of disparate entities, and the disruption of previous conditions.”
That sounds remarkably modern. Don’t believe me? Just compare it to the creative method outlined in psychologist Gary Klein’s Seeing What Others Don’t (2015) or a similar model in The Runaway Species (2017) by neuroscientist David Eagleman and artist Anthony Brandt.
The Value of Innovation
Lest there be any confusion, Aristotle did not write a self-help book on creativity somehow preserved and translated for modern eyes. No, D’Angour teases the above insight from five scattered texts he presents in the book—two by Aristotle, two by the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, and another from Athenaeus of Naucratis.
Aristotle’s excerpts bookend the project, hence the top billing. They also present the strongest theoretical points about innovation. The first, taken from his treatise Physics, concerns the nature of change itself. The second, taken from his Politics, concerns the relative value of change.
In the second, Aristotle notes the benefits of innovation in disciplines such as the arts and medicine. If innovation improves one domain, shouldn’t we seek to innovate in all—or in all cases? The philosopher says no. It’s reasonable, for instance, to change outdated and backward laws. But, he says,
it is dangerous to become accustomed to casually abrogating the law. . . . People will gain less by making the change than they will lose by becoming accustomed to violating authority.
D’Angour summarizes Aristotle: “The value of innovation differs depending on the domain in which it is applied.” Determining when to innovate requires discernment.
Incentives, Disruption, and Competition
Through the remaining texts, D’Angour offers several additional insights of his own distilled from his sources. About the conditions for innovation, he says, “Innovations are made when people enjoy the freedom and resources to think creatively, when opportunities exist to disseminate ideas with ease and rapidity, and when personal, social, and financial incentives are present.”
Turning to a bit from Diodorus’s Library, D’Angour goes on to discuss the principle of disruption: “In creating change, there is value in thinking and acting in a way that does not follow the common trend but opposes it.”
Again inspired by Diodorus, this time from an excerpt of his History, D’Angour considers the benefits of competition: “Necessity, it is said, is the ‘mother of invention’; so perhaps competition could be called the father.”
Diodorus’s History offers a delightful if deadly example of competition in action. The fourth-century B.C. king of Syracuse, Dionysius I, needed help vanquishing fortified cities. Sieges were costly, though they could be averted with effective artillery. But how to develop the necessary technology?
Dionysius sponsored a contest. He convened the craftsmen of his own cities and lured others from Italy, Greece, and Carthage with financial incentives. The people, says Diodorus,
took up Dionysius’s project with enthusiasm, and they competed strenuously to manufacture weapons. All available spaces, from the porticos and back rooms of temples to gymnasia and the colonnades in the agora, were crowded with workmen. . . . And in fact it was at this period, with the most skilled craftsmen being concentrated in one place, that the catapult was invented in Syracuse.
Prizes were awarded for the most valuable innovations and painstaking effort. Such contests and incentives are commonplace today, but it’s striking to imagine the scheme working so well twenty-four hundred years ago.
Another thing I take from Diodorus’s account of competition? The heightened energy of creative people working in proximity. Think of the economics work of Richard Florida and Enrico Moretti or the many innovations at Bell Labs (see John Gertner’s 2012 book, The Idea Factory). The lesson: If you want to be more innovative, you should live and work close to innovative people. D’Angour shows us we’ve known the benefits for a very long time.
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers
We shouldn’t be surprised to find insights so modern in texts so ancient. Innovation, as anthropologist Agustín Fuentes reminds us in The Creative Spark (2017), is a human constant. We can, however, be grateful to D’Angour for the refreshing reminder. We can also take it as a reminder that the past has much to tell the present—if we’ll bother to listen.
Kanye West once admitted he doesn’t read books. In fact, he claims he’s never read a book. “Reading,” he said, “is like eating Brussels sprouts for me.” It’s a great comparison, actually, because Brussels sprouts are amazing! It’s all in how you prepare them. And that’s the genius of D’Angour‘s book and the series from Princeton University Press to which it belongs.
Classical texts are sometimes tough to get into, but Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers offers fresh translations in handy packages that invite rather than intimidate. Like How to Innovate, these books are presented topically as how-to manuals—everything from grieving to giving, time management to anger management, farming to friendship. A sampling from my own shelf:
How to Be Content (Horace)
How to Win an Argument (Cicero)
How to Say No (Diogenes)
How to Do the Right Thing (Seneca)
How to Be a Leader (Plutarch)
How to Flourish (Aristotle)
How to Keep an Open Mind (Sextus Empiricus)
I reviewed another in the series, John Cassian’s How to Focus, here.
“Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers presents the timeless and timely ideas of classical thinkers in lively new translations,” says the publisher. “Enlightening and entertaining, these books make the practical wisdom of the ancient world accessible for modern life.”
So, yes, we’ve got Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and the rest. But we’ve also got Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, and Diogenes. And now they’re more accessible than ever thanks to Princeton University Press. How very innovative.
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I was going to write a book about that but I slept in.