Reward for innovation?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

what would be an incentive or reward for innovation? would there be any? If there isn't wouldn't we become backwards? Post your thought here.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

For progress and new ideas to emerge we don't require financial/material incentive. In a non-capitalist society, people may not even view financial/material things as an incentive. We live in a society where greed motivates people to be innovative. If other factors become primary motivators, (such as good-will or intellectual curiosity) we may avoid the inefficiency of the capitalist system and more easily create new technologies.

[Delta]

The incentive for innovation is that it makes everyone's life easier, and earns you the respect of your peers. Imagine if everyone pitched in to clean up the sewage system every month (just picking something gross), don't you think that people would want for a better solution to the problem? Our world is full of people who love solving problems for the sake of solving problems, and we also have a good deal who will do anything to look good to the neighbors. Maybe we should look at incentives not to innovate instead :P

Also, most innovation done in a capitalist system is done by people who don't get much money out of it. They are problem-solvers, as I mentioned above.

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2006, 04:41 AM
what would be an incentive or reward for innovation? would there be any? If there isn't wouldn't we become backwards? Post your thought here.
No, we wouldn't "become backwards".

Scientists, innovators, inventors etc. do their job not because of a reward waiting for them at the end of the road, but because they want implement their ideas. They want to put in practice what has been theorized in their heads.

You can see this throughout history. Did Archemedes gain anything from his inventions, besides recognition?

I could extend this to many other areas of science....I think you get my point.

[Okocim]

Hero of Alexandria
Thales
Pythagoras
Marie Curie
Isaac Newton

Many people are driven to invent simply because they are curious about things. Even in a communist system these people will continue to invent/research new ideas, not because of the monetary reward which is present in capitalism, but because of the reward of the respect of their peers and the self-satisfaction of finding out something new.

We know this will work because of how it worked for the ancient Greeks. Human curiosity will remain constant.

[TheGreatOne]

Money is a much stronger motivator for innovating and inventing than the respect of your peers is. In a capitalist society, you have the money motivation as well as the respect motivation and the desire to make your ideas a reality. In a communist society, you lose the money motivation and you are also forced to convince a bunch of people to spend their time on your idea. In capitalism, if you have capital, you can very easily get anyone to spend their time on your idea.

[ComradeRed]

Have you heard of the Open Source Movement? It's a software movement that tries to provide free software that is as good or better than proprietary software.

Why do they do this innovation? There is no monetary reward in it for them, why do it?

Simple, they love doing what they do. There is no bigger reward than writing, debugging, and perfecting the software.

Innovation is the same concept, except applied to other things other than software.

[TheGreatOne]

Yes, I've heard of open source. Keep in mind I never said innovation would disappear. I just think you lose one of the main motivations for it.

[ComradeRed]

Yes, I've heard of open source. Keep in mind I never said innovation would disappear. I just think you lose one of the main motivations for it.
That doesn't make any sense, philistine.

Innovation wouldn't disappear period and you just confessed it.

What backwater reasoning you use; "innovation wouldn't disappear...but it would if money disappeared...no really, trust me...really" :rolleyes:

[TheGreatOne]

what the hell is a philistine?

and ya, i did "confess" that innovation wouldn't disappear. i think that was pretty clear from my second sentence there.

[Avtomatov]

thegreatone, you are right. For some people money is a stronger motivator, and other dont need monetary compensation. Obviously if communism whent into effect today then production would drop, and so would research and invention.

[KC]

thegreatone, you are right. For some people money is a stronger motivator, and other dont need monetary compensation. Obviously if communism whent into effect today then production would drop, and so would research and invention.

Actually, new people that never had access to education would fill the place of these idiots, arguably creating more innovation.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

None of these are very good are arguements. I mean while it's nice knowing you're doing something out of the goodness of your heart, in capitalism you can do something out of the goodness of your heart AND get a monetary bonus. While in fields like science, technology, and medicine people may innovate because they're fascinated in it, in business and industrial fields, innovation is usually the product of the monetary bonus.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Material incentives aren't the great enemy
In fact, it's likely to be among the great motivations for the overthrow of capitalism and the collectivisation of capital power.

Of course disparity in the ownership of personal goods must be minimum, but the important thing isn't a perfectly egalitarian distribution of goods for all, but public control of capital and the allocation of said goods.

[red team]

Does any job require olympic level weight lifting abilities anymore?

No, because you've got bulldozers, forklifts and other power tools.

Does any engineer really have to remember all the formulas for force balancing anymore for building a large structure? No, he can get away with some basic knowledge and how things interact, but no he doesn't need to be a human computer anymore. Really, ask any engineer on the job now.

Why? Same reason why there's no necessity to be a human forklift anymore.

In the future, innovation will come mostly from the use of computer aided engineering and computer aided research.

[Delta]

Originally posted by red [email protected] 18 2006, 06:59 PM
In the future, innovation will come mostly from the use of computer aided engineering and computer aided research.
How can computers innovate anything? They can do as they're programmed.

[JKP]

You don't get rewarded for innovation in capitalism yet people still do it.

[red team]

How can computers innovate anything? They can do as they're programmed.

Yes, but you're looking at only the model T of computers and computer science. There are things in the development stage now that would just leave you speechless.

These concepts are already developed when I studied in school:

- genetic algorithms
basically using pieces of computer code like they are pieces of DNA so you come up with the best "breed" to solve a problem after generations of computer programs "mating". These generations only take micro seconds to develop.

- Neural nets
Writing computer programs that simulate the actual way brain cells in your brain are wired up so certain "cells" fires after training them to perform a task to specification much like how we learn.

- Parallel computing
What you have right now in your computer is most likely a single processor machine. That is, it only has a single computer chip that handles the task of running all programs in your computer, but this architecture is about to change soon. Near future computers will have multiple processors (multiple CPUs) that would be able to split up problems and solve each sub-problem separately before combining them back together to solve the main problem. Think of this as several people playing chess with each person concentrating on the strategy of a single piece while still being able to communicate with each other about the best main strategy. How is this good? Well, how many ways are there to design a car or bridge or building or anything? Imagine having a hundred engineers each working on their own different solution to this and culling each of these "engineer" programs until the best solution is reached. With multiple CPUs this is done simultaneously without making the illusion of "multi-tasking" by switching between tasks one at a time (but very fast) as we do now.