Thinking like a historian can transform the way how research can be performed on patents.
As a historian studies the history and tries to connect different events to understand the cause behind one large event, Evolution Thinking, similarly, provides a tool to the researcher to perform a similar connection between different events in the evolution of a particular technology.
This very approach of evolutionary thinking followed at GreyB enables a researcher to visualize the evolution of technology as a historian.
How Evolutionary Thinking Works?
To begin with, let us consider the theory of evolution in nature and understand the origin of whales. For that, it’s necessary to have a basic understanding of how natural selection works.
Natural selection – is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits.
Natural selection can change a species in small ways: causing a population to change or adapt over the course of several generations. This effect is termed as microevolution, and unsurprisingly, the same can also be observed in technology.
Technology also changes and evolves.
But natural evolution is also capable of much more.
Given enough time and enough accumulated changes, natural selection can create entirely new species. It can turn dinosaurs into birds, apes into humans and amphibious mammals into whales. Disruptive evolution, we call it, ladies and Gentlemen!
What if, the same is applicable for technology?
At GreyB, this approach of Evolutionary Thinking has been developed to transform the traditional way of performing research.
Evolutionary Thinking, if followed, enables a person to identify the root cause of the microevolution and identify what was existing at a certain period of time.
To explain this concept better, one needs to be aware of mutations. For the uninitiated, Mutations are the physical and behavioral changes that make natural selection possible happen at the level of DNA and genes.
Evolutionary Thinking helps in identifying such technology mutations that are deliberately induced in order to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. For example, mutation of distributed computing which started from Ethernet moved to Mainframe in high computing banking environment; moved to multi-player online games as high-end games arrived, moved to real-time process controls in Aircraft, moved to Distributed rendering in computer graphics, and moved to parallel processing in the cloud computing environment.
Why is Evolutionary Thinking Approach better than Traditional One?
The traditional process, on one hand, limits the scope of the research thereby leading to limited answers to the questions. Whereas Evolutionary thinking helps access new information by connecting links, providing a perspective, which might have been non-existent until the moment.
For instance, let us try and answer the question “How whales took to water” by taking the evolutionary thinking approach.
Using evolution as their guide and knowing how natural selection works, biologists knew that the transition of early whales from land to water occurred in a series of predictable steps.
The evolution of the blowhole, for example, might have happened in the following way:
Random mutations resulted in at least one whale having its nostrils placed farther back on its head. Those animals with this adaptation would have been better suited to a marine lifestyle since they would not have had to completely surface to breathe. Such animals would have been more successful and had more offspring. In later generations, more mutations occurred, moving the nose farther back on the head.
Other body parts of early whales also changed. Front legs became flippers. Back legs disappeared. Their bodies became more streamlined and they developed tail flukes to better propel themselves through the water. These whales were swimming-walking whales that later evolved into various forms of land animals, such as seal.
Source – Understanding evolution
Similarly, if we look closely, the concept of bitcoin and virtual currency disrupting electronic commerce can be linked back to the use of coins for buying powers in the games in the early 1990s.
Though Scientists were aware of what early whales looked like, they still lacked the evidence to back up their linkage to land animals. In a similar manner, researchers using traditional processes are unable to form links between the two technologies which are just mutations of each other.
If we are able to link these two, we get access to completely new information which was earlier invisible when seen in context to a particular technology.
Evolution Thinking has been formed to make this possible. GreyB has multiple patents pending that contribute to the concept of Evolution Thinking.
To find out more about our thought process, check out our archives or talk to us-
