Intelligence, Knowledge, and Innovation

This chapter summarizes the evolution of human intelligence, knowledge, and innovation. Human's accumulation of knowledge is accelerating and so is intelligence. The increase in mental capabilities must play an important role in the acceleration of human knowledge creation and innovation. Human knowledge and innovation is growing exponentially for three reasons: (1) the number of people in tertiary education doubles every third year; (2) the continued development and spread of meta-ideas, (3) the average Intelligence Quotient (IQ) grows approximately 0.3% per annum. All of this adds up to a global network effect of smartness. The most important conclusions drawn from the chapter are: average human intelligence will continue to rise approximately 0.3% every year; the number of knowledge workers will continue to grow 5% a year; the performance of computer chips and genomic sequencing will grow 50-75% a year for a number of years; and the total amount of scientific and technical knowledge will grow approximately 10% a year, driven by the two factors above plus the continued development of meta-ideas. Without great meta-ideas, new ideas are likely to be lost quickly or to find no useful application.