Prateek Goorha

The Ideas Before Sports

The authors present an application of their theory of ideas by undertaking an investigation on the origins of the ideas for a broad class of sports. They begin their search in this chapter for the source of the antecedent idea spaces that provided the core ideas of sports. In doing this, the authors take the long view, presenting the evidence for the very first shared idea spaces that likely developed in human history, including hunting and lithic technology. They examine the case for how these idea spaces assumed a crucial role in the overall idea hierarchy for the key ideas across a range of sports.

A Subjective Theory of Ideas

The authors introduce key concepts, including an individual’s idea space and a fuzzy-crisp continuum for ideas. They explain how their theory conceptualizes information, core beliefs and biases. They examine the process of how new ideas are processed in an idea space, emphasizing subjectivity, awareness and the density of available ideas. They build their theory by considering how different types of ideas interact within idea spaces and create a hierarchy of fuzzy rules. The authors discuss how this process informs the worldviews held by individuals and those shared by groups. The authors present the broad scope of their theory with several interesting examples.

The Ideas in Sports

In this final chapter, the authors conclude the application of their theory to the core ideas in sports. They present the evidence for the various collective idea spaces that are most likely to have provided the core ideas for sports before examining the nature of their connection with each of the ideas. They discuss the development of such ideas as throwing, striking, competitively seeking prestige, displaying prosocial behavior, and the role of individual talent.

Mechanisms of the Theory of Ideas

In this chapter, the authors integrate several concepts into their theory and discuss how the various mechanisms come together in an overarching theory for how ideas develop. They simplify the discussion by identifying five key components: perspectives, aspects, consolidation and realizability, contextual sensitivity, and recursiveness. Together these components help explain how new ideas are innovated and what influences the course of their development into becoming more broadly accepted. They suggest how their theory suggests two distinct types of creativity: praxis creativity and theoretical creativity.

Core Rules, Contracts, and Commons

In this chapter, the authors develop the argument for why their theory suggests cooperation as a necessary overarching premise for competition. They propose a foundational idea space that is based on four essential ideas—the core principles—that then frame the hierarchy for the development of all other idea spaces. They motivate their discussion by using two key analogies that have practical relevance. First, they liken collective idea spaces to a broad swath of collective agreements, from knowledge commons to firms, and suggest how these parallel a variety of contractual agreements. Second, they develop the concept of an idea imbalance between idea spaces to discuss how variations in collective idea spaces emerge.

Creativity and Innovation: A New Theory of Ideas

Ideas are ubiquitous. They are the fundamental building blocks for all aspects of life. Yet, efforts to use ideas as a basic unit of analysis in a shared framework are rare. We often find it difficult to look past the artificial boundaries that academic disciplines and specialist fields of knowledge construct. In this book, the authors address this substantial lacuna by proposing an intuitive theory of ideas that serves as a trans-disciplinary basis for studying innovation and creativity. The theory proposed shows how new ideas emerge from contexts that rely on mechanisms, which were originally built on older and more central ideas. It demonstrates how these mechanisms help instantiate different perspectives on the same idea in variegated manners. By applying their theory to a variety of bat and ball sports, the authors illustrate the role that primitive ideas have on sports innovation, and explore further avenues for employing the theory in a number of different situations. This original book will be of interest to anyone who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of innovation and creativity, developed within a complex framework of ideas.