Immigration and Innovation

I'm prefacing this meditation with a disclaimer for the folks who may have stumbled in from a search engine: this is not a political blog and I prefer to avoid the subject entirely.  This is a consideration of the (positive) effects of immigration on the development of new and revolutionary ideas and comments of a political nature will be excluded.  That said ....

I heard the most gorgeously half-witted thing today: someone claimed that America is a highly innovative country because of the diversity of the nation.  Don't get me wrong - diversity is a good thing and has been positive for America in many ways, but I don't think it is the cause of the innovative spirit in this country - however, the process of immigration likely is a cause ("a" and not "the") for the aggregation of innovative people, for reasons other than cultural diversity.

Giving Diversity its Due

I do not entirely dispute the positive effects of diversity on innovation.   When people from different cultures come together, they meet people who do things differently to themselves.   And in so doing, the rational reaction is to give fair consideration for the ways of other cultures, taking an objective position in considering if "their" way might indeed be better than "our" way.  Though most people likely have a more emotional reaction, shunning and resisting anything that is different to their culture, the rational is not entirely quashed and will win out in the long run.

Nations that have a long-standing domestic culture are often resistant to change - and it is in this sense that America and other new-world countries have a distinct advantage, in that there is no long-standing domestic culture to be defended.  Though there's is much disagreement about what culture ought to be, there is no historical record to back one side.

Those areas where culture has been static, or without immigration and diversity to any significant degree,  do not gain this perspective simply because everyone has the some culture, does things the same way, and is never given a cause to question whether "the" way (in the absence of "them") is the best alternative.

But I don't think that this creates innovation - it creates change, and if anything that change is done in the interests of normalization.  Perhaps in some cases a third way is discovered, not theirs nor ours but some fusion of the two that yields something unprecedented in both cultures.  But in most instances I suspect that one or the other is better and is therefore adopted.  Society as a whole benefits all the same.   But this is imitative rather than innovative in that nothing new is created as a result.

Immigration, Not Diversity

Rather than the mere diversity of population that resulted from immigration of people from different lands, my sense is that the innovative spirit became concentrated in America due to the individual liberty that it affords those who live here: the right to pursue one's own definition of happiness, the right to use one's person and property in ways that others may find objectionable, is the chief driver of innovation and advancement.

That is to say that people in other countries who were visionaries were discouraged or prevented from pursuing their vision in their home nation because there was a uniformity of culture, but in the multicultural of the United States there is no formal "Department of American Culture" in government, and the structure of government was such that enforcing a singular culture was contrary to its stated purposes.

Specifically, diversity did not create innovation, but it created a condition in which people who already had innovative capacity were able to exploit it without discouragement or punishment, and with a great deal of reward and encouragement.   The net result is that people did not become innovative because they had moved to America, they came to America because they already were innovative and felt that pursuing their vision was worth leaving their homeland.   And this is where I think the person who assumed that diversity alone caused innovation got it entirely backward.

Innovative People as Resources

While it was likely not the intent of those who designed the government of the United States to create a beacon for innovation, it was the net result - and the rapid progress of the nation and its speedy rise to world dominance was a consequence of that.   While being entirely unaware of it, the Founding Fathers changed the nature of competition among nations.

Prior to the industrial revolution, and likely for several decades afterward, the struggle for power among nations was for the control of resources.  One tribe would attack another to seize its food, one nation would attack another to seize its land, timber, minerals, and other factors of production.   The competition was essentially about getting things from somewhere else, or things that could be used to make other things for the benefit of one's own citizens.

The new basis of competition is not over the control of things, but over the control of ideas.    Seizing the land and resources to manufacture something and enslaving people to participate is only of value if you know what to do with the things you have stolen.   There is much greater and sustainable power in having possession of the people who are knowledgeable and visionary enough to make good use of those resources, and it's not being fought among nations, but among corporations.

At the risk of straying into politics, conflict among nations in the present era is a conflict among ideologies: those traditionalists who want to stop new ideas from entering the old village have become more proactive in resisting the change that is proposed by other ideologies, and both sides feel their way is best and that others ought to play along.   In essence, it is a conflict of tradition and evolution - a battle for or against innovation - with America and the West leading the charge in favor of change.

The Competition for Innovators

The competition for people is not the same as the competition for things.   A thing, once seized, can be used as one sees fit - but this requires the user to know how to make use of it.   A person, once seized, can be made into a slave - but a slave does not innovate, but merely obeys a master - and the master must decide to know how to make use of the slave. That is to say that controlling people, whether through outright slavery or merely manipulation, gives one the use of the person's body, but very little access to the capabilities their mind.

It also stands to note that "countries" are less relevant now than ever before, given that many corporations are multinational, the parts of a company that happen to be located between arbitrary political boundaries are generally not self-sufficient.  An American company may have a factory in China that makes machine parts - but nationalizing the factory would give the government of China the ability to make only what is already being made, which will soon become obsolete as better parts and better machines are invented outside of its borders.

As such, the competition for innovators is a competition between companies rather than nations - whether those who provide the ideas that fuel economic growth are citizens of one nation or another is immaterial. Both the innovators who create profit and the investors who profit from their innovation are also spread among multiple nations, and the physical assets of the company are of decreasing importance to its profit potential when compared to the value of its innovative employees.

Where Was I Going With This?

I have the distinct sense I'm meandering at this point - but perhaps it's because the point has been made and I'm now chasing after loose threads: that the concentration of innovators in a country or company is the result of making itself appealing to those who wish to innovate, to attract rather than seize the creative potential of human resources.

My sense is that the value of this lesson is nebulously understood by companies - the sense I get from the current literature is that companies recognize the need for innovative people to remain competitive, but do not fully grasp the reasons why, nor the means by which they can do so.   Perhaps somewhere in all this nattering is the thread of an answer?