Is Competition Vital To Innovation?

[Lucem Ferre]

So I'm having this discussion else where thought it might be worth having here.

The argument is that competition breeds innovation and with out it we wouldn't have phones, computers, gone to the moon, etc.

I disagree, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this idea.

Sounds like some bull**** people use to defend the class hierarchy of capitalism.

[Oriphiel]

Sometimes.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I think it's plausible, but unlikely. Correlation does not imply causation.

Advancement begins with a conceptual idea in a field of expertise...

While I agree that competition creates the foundations by standardization, if you notice with advancement: Every time a new advancement is made, a new standardized model is thereafter released...and that this is fundamentally true with most fields from technological, to medical, to financial, to architectural, and even that unto the arts themselves (for example: Without Bach, we would not have gotten to Chopin, etc. ...)

Innovation is the result of a creative mind in a conceptual trance or focus, whereas industrialization is the aftermath of that creativity wherein new standardization is released in the format of competition.

Nobody that ever got anywhere worth noting did it out of competition. They did it out of creative ideas and conceptual thoughts within their field. For that matter, the computer scientist and doctor are just as much of artists as painters, sculptors, and musicians. It's just a different kind of art, a different expression of art.

The general public, I feel, doesn't like looking at it this way because it doesn't fit the comfortable little box of tightly-knitted feelings and societal directional paths...but if you think about it: No actual innovative path ever actually begins inside the box, because that's not how advancement happens.

Somebody creates an idea, runs that idea into the ground until it works, and the box of standardization adjusts itself accordingly as a result. Therefore: Competition is just the aftermath of innovation, not the driving cause of it.

[OccultHawk]

phones

Alexander Graham Bell developed the foundation for the telephone while experimenting with ideas to help deaf people. However, before the technology was perfect a race for the patent probably sped up the process.

Obviously this is just speculation but once the telegraph and the radio were invented the phone as we think of it now was already inevitable. However, without “competition” (quotes used because that’s a very vague word) we’d probably still be using those things with dials in 2019.

[The Batlord]

And at this point much of the technology that's most important to us is so complex that single people aren't really gonna get anywhere without cooperation, and also about phones...

[Plankton]

It's not vital, but it speeds things along. Like the Manhattan Project. Innovation can be a result of necessity too, like food and consumption, but you could simplify it's most basic form of innovation as a competition between living and dying.

[Frownland]

In the ad hoc sense, sure. In the realistic sense, it can but it's not a requirement.

[DwnWthVwls]

The history of mathematics alone says otherwise. It's circumstantial at best.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

The history of mathematics alone says otherwise. It's circumstantial at best.

Really what does math say?

[DwnWthVwls]

Its filled with people obsessed with solving problems without competition or out of necessity.