In the wild dance of evolution and business, nimbleness reigns supreme—but it’s not without peril. Picture Amazon’s bold 2014 leap into mobile phones with the Fire Phone. Fresh off dominating cloud computing, the company swung big. Yet the device flopped hard: just 35,000 units sold in its first month, while Apple moved that many iPhones per hour. Users griped about the app drought and a handset so hot it burned fingers. Amazon slashed the price to 99 cents, burned through stock, and killed it. The silver lining? This calculated gamble never rocked the core empire. Amazon dusted off, sent fresh “scouts” into new frontiers, proving survivors stay dexterous amid unpredictable change.
This mirrors a primal puzzle shared by ancient creature brains and modern CEOs: how to balance exploiting known strengths against exploring uncharted lands? No business—or beast—rests on past glories forever. The world shifts; the final mobile phone, perfect TV show, umbrella, bike, or shoe will never exist. Creative companies win by diversifying, pivoting fast, and embracing the flux.
Fueling this fire? Raw materials and tools that spark neural fireworks. Thomas Edison stocked his lab with endless supplies to ease idea generation. Design powerhouse IDEO curates a “tech box” brimming with gadgets, fabric swatches, and quirky odds-and-ends—a mental wellspring for engineers and designers.
Inside the active brain, ideas erupt, multiply, and duel for survival. Only a elite few cross into conscious spotlight; the rest fade. Companies mimic this: initiatives compete fiercely for backing. Winners hit the threshold and launch; losers get shelved. In a foggy future, even stellar concepts can obsolete overnight. Strength lies in proliferation—spawn tons of ideas, prune ruthlessly, and pivot without fear.
Yet we’re squandering vast creative capital by sidelining huge swaths of humanity. Countless discoveries, insights, and solutions slip away when we ignore innate ingenuity. The math is simple: plant and nurture more seeds, reap a richer harvest of imagination.
Young minds unlock inventiveness through art—the most overt gateway to innovation’s toolkit. Our social brains amplify this: we bond not just physically, but through surprises that wow each other. Innovation pulses through culture’s veins, yet our craving for novelty never fades. We tinker endlessly.
At root, human creativity weaves vast knowledge trees that interbreed wildly. Our shared cognitive toolkit bends it all—whether patent, melody, recipe, or quip. Like graphics software rotating zebras or jets alike, neural “sub-routines” transform experience by bending, breaking, and blending raw inputs. This generative power scales infinitely.
Innovation blooms from branching and selection: test hordes of ideas, let a few endure, then breed the next wave. It’s built our roofs, tripled lifespans, birthed machines, fueled flirtations, and flooded us with songs and stories.
But we often trap ourselves in “closed-world” thinking, assuming our current knowledge defines reality. The future mirrors the now—until history reminds us otherwise. Break free, diversify, and explore: that’s the nimble path to enduring creativity.
Source : The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World by David Eagleman, Anthony Brandt
Goodreads :https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34146662-the-runaway-species
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Thinking Beyond Science 
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