Arboreal vs. Rhizomic

The seekers (the accretive innovations of experience) and the finders (conceptualists & the success of youth) that David Galenson speaks of as the different types of innovators want different things fortunately. Finders such as Martin Creed get the benefit of the winning but also the hiatus and the self-questioning don’t support the activity of the finder as they encourage people to do more of the same. Seekers such as Gillian Carnegie and Cornelia Parker have the benefit of the nomination but not the winning as it supports the way they work.
This hierarchical view of winners, rankings and scale gets stuck in that it works against the flexibility, responsiveness and freedom to follow your nose which is important in the support of intuition in innovation. In this sense the rhizomic approach with the agglomeration effect has a significant role to play.
So lets stop this chest beating boys and get down out of the trees. When you start walking on two legs and wear a skirt you’ll find that a pair of heels gives you something more important than blisters.
It is this rhizomic collaborative approach which will be important in the internationalisation of the SME’s in the creative & knowledge industries worldwide in the 21st century not the scale driven arboreal approach of the 19th century manufacturing economies.

So we do need to balance the prizes and the youth awards with policies that support the accretive and experience based breakthroughs but we need to support them in ways other than hierarchical rankings and prize structures ... we need to support them through clusters, collaboration and synergistic connections to breadth of ideas.