Confirming the obvious can be progress

The question is interesting and this research contributes at the margin to our still emerging understanding. The question might be something on the order of "What are the circumstances which help drive greater levels of innovation?"

Who hasn't been puzzled by the clusters of innovation in the past? The sudden explosion of knowledge and philosophy in Greece circa 500BC. The astonishing experiment hatched by the incredible conglomeration of knowledge and talent of the Founding Fathers from Richmond to Boston in the mid-to-late 1700s in the America. The astonishing concentration of applied knowledge in Britain in the 1700s (the industrial revolution) and the separate knowledge generation in the 1800s. The incredible density of scientific discovery from Paris to Warsaw in the late 1800s. The Renaissance of Italy in the 1500s.

Such incredible explosions of knowledge, discovery and innovation in brief periods of time, in constrained geographies, involving small groups of extraordinary individuals. Why? What are the causal factors?

How important are local inventive milieus: The role of birthplace, high school and university education by Olof Ejermoa and Høgni Kalsø Hansen doesn't really answer those questions but it has a stab at some aspects.

• We find that the geography of inventors is uneven in Sweden.

• The location history of inventors indicate that local milieus matters.

• Parents educational has an effects on whether a person becomes an inventor.

• Place of higher education has strong effect on whether a person becomes an inventor.

• Birthplace has a strong effects on whether a person becomes an inventor.

Well, yeah. Family matters, education matters, milieu matters. Seems kind of obvious. However, in an environment of cognitive uncertainty, even confirming the obvious is progress.