Although I know little about Smalltalk, I do have some experience
here, and cannot resist jumping in ...

In the artificial evolution community the issue of how to allocate the
resources in searching has been hotly debated. We call this Exploration
versus Exploitation. Exploration involves seeding new regions of search
space. Exploitation means finding better solutions in a populated region,
eg. by running a hill-climber which tests close neighbors. However, in a
population based search method like evolutionary computation (and
scientific research :) both these techniques usually proceed in parallel.
Neither is "better", it is just an issue of dynamically deciding how the
progress of the search justifies the allocation of computational resources
...


> 
>      Getting back to Andrew's original inquiry, I think that invention and
> innovation (i.e. revolution vs. evolution) are mostly the same thing just
> observed at different resoultions or scales.  If you quantize a signal with
> large enough granularity, even the smoothest curve will eventually appear to be
> a step function.  There is also a concept in the study of evolutionary systems
> called "punctuated equilibrium".  I would refer you to the works of John R.
> Koza, Danny Hillis, Stuart Kauffman, and John Holland for more detailed
> explanation, but the basic idea is that a population is continuously evolving,
> with individual members of the population covering a broad spectrum of
> "fitness", and when a "crtical mass" is reached at a higher fitness level, the
> whole population will quickly advance to the new higher fitness level over a
> very short timespan.  This mechanism may also help explain invention vs.
> innovation.  If you need them I could dig up specific references.
> 
> 
>                                                    -Dean Swan
>                                                    dean_swan at mitel.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Henrik Gedenryd wrote:
> >
> > Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:
> >
> > > Forgive me, but I am in need of some solid authority and references
> > > relating the importance of incremental invention or innovation, as
> > > compared to pioneering and revolutionary invention.  In particular, is
> > > there any consensus among authorities regarding the relative virtues of
> > > the two forms of creativity or their interactions?
> 
> The distinction I was taught at Imperial was:-
> invention is creating something new
> innovation is making something new actually exist as a presence in some
> suitable marketplace.
> 
> i.e. having a good idea is all very well but it does little good until
> you can obtain it some currency. To stretch the point a little, whilst
> it was only in PARC, Smalltalk was an invention, once it spread around
> (ParcPlace, Digitalk, etc) it was an innovation.
> 
> 
> > I think I agree with Alan that attending to small improvements (pink work)
> > will indeed impede progress on a greater scale (blue), by detracting
> > attention etc. The recent Internet craze probably held back genuine cs
> > advances for 5 years or so, because everyone focused on exploiting old
> > technologies instead of coming up with new ones. Bad for invention/progress,
> > good for the economy.