The innovation paradox: Concept space expansion with diminishing originality and the promise of creative artificial intelligence

Abstract

Innovation, typically spurred by reusing, recombining and synthesizing existing concepts, is expected to result in an exponential growth of the concept space over time. However, our statistical analysis of TechNet, which is a comprehensive technology semantic network encompassing over 4 million concepts derived from patent texts, reveals a linear rather than exponential expansion of the overall technological concept space. Moreover, there is a notable decline in the originality of newly created concepts. These trends can be attributed to the constraints of human cognitive abilities to innovate beyond an ever-growing space of prior art, among other factors. Integrating creative artificial intelligence into the innovation process holds the potential to overcome these limitations and alter the observed trends in the future.