Arts of innovation and the cientific method

franklin
Ben Franklin

NEW
Innovation
coverage
online

Innovator tours of museums in Paris

Tips for success in old age

Sol LeWitt,
finder

Give Ralph Ellison a break

Greatest
women
artists

How Disney Imagineers innovate

Clint Eastwood, seeker
(Feb. 4)

The complex
case of Fernando Botero
(Jan. 21 and 30)

Innovators
in academia
(Jan. 10)

Orson Welles and John Milton!
(Dec. 14)

Major League Baseball
as experimental innovator
(Dec. 13)

Walt Disney
as finder
(Dec. 12)

Inventor Stanford Ovshinsky as aging finder
(Dec. 9)

Morris Louis
as seeker
(Nov. 18)

What the scientific method means to innovators

Scientific innovators stand out from others because of their reliance on the scientific method, which has a particular relevance to David Galenson’s observations about conceptual and experimental innovators.

Because of the demands of the scientific method, scientists can’t abandon experimentation, even if their strengths are conceptual, nor can they abandon theory even if their strengths have an experimental bent.

Other types of innovators – from poets to inventors – aren’t bound by the scientific method, so they can pursue their inclinations more single-mindedly.