هوش، خلاقیت، و نوآوری

This study provides the first test of the intelligence–innovation hypothesis, which contributes to the intelligence–creativity debate in the psychology literature and to the innovation–growth debate in the economics literature. Using U.S. state-level data the study finds that, net of other factors, high-IQ states are more innovative as measured by the important innovation outcome measure, utility patents registered. This study highlights the need for a better understanding of the relationship between intelligence, creative achievement, and innovation, a nascent and under-researched field of inquiry. Our research also begs the question of whether efforts to nurture intelligence are a necessary first step to increasing the capacity to realize innovation improvements.

The relationship between intelligence, creativity, and innovation is little understood by economists and psychologists alike and is a fertile area for research, particularly interdisciplinary research, where questions abound in terms of the influence of intelligence on both creativity and innovation. Indeed, the major focus of this paper is the question: do more intelligent societies or communities innovate more? Although psychologists have not addressed the intelligence–innovation relationship explicitly, they have made attempts at understanding how intelligence contributes to creativity, a related trait, but mainly at the individual level. However, the absence of a unified definition of creativity has made this task not only challenging but controversial. In addition, related inquiries face further complications arising from the fact that intelligence and creativity are constructed differently and are subjected to varying theoretical and psychometric development (see e.g. Kaufman & Plucker, 2011). Empirical studies have generally reported little to no correlation between intelligence and creativity. Two notable examples include Wallach and Kogan (1965) and Kim (2005) who report average correlation between intelligence and creativity of 0.09 and 0.17, respectively.1 The low correlation between intelligence and creativity, to some extent, arises from the confusing array of definitions and measures that are used to represent creativity in empirical studies. Indeed, Nusbaum and Silvia (2011) emphasize that modern creativity research emphasizes the difference between intelligence and creativity and draw particular attention to the work of Kaufman (2009) and Sawyer (2006). However, Nusbaum and Silvia take a different view and assert that intelligence is more central to creative cognition than is more popularly believed. Just like psychologists, economists have expressed keen interest in the role that innovation plays in stimulating economic growth. There are strong theoretical foundations in four different branches of economic thought: evolutionary (Nelson and Winter, 1982 and Schumpeter, 1934); neo-classical (Solow, 1956 and Solow, 1957); post-Keynesian (Kaldor, 1957); and endogenous growth (Romer, 1986 and Romer, 1990). Although the transmission mechanism from innovation to economic growth varies depending upon the framework, the evidence consistently predict that more innovation leads to greater economic growth (Guellec and van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, 2001 and Lederman and Maloney, 2003). Innovation boosts productivity, improves an economy's competitiveness and contributes to building knowledge-based economies and societies. Intelligence is a key aspect of human capital in any society and human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth. For instance, Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) include a human capital variable in their empirical test of the Solow (1957) model where human capital is measured by secondary school enrollments. Other human capital measures include primary school enrollments (Sala-i-Martin, 1997) and average years of schooling (Barro & Lee, 1993). More recently, Jones and Schneider (2006) use IQ as the human capital measure in their empirical test of the human capital-economic growth hypothesis. Similar to Weede and Kämpf (2002) they find that intelligence, measured by IQ, has a direct, positive effect on economic growth. Given that intelligence is an important element of human capital, we propose that there is more innovation in societies that have high-IQ populations for three reasons. First, more intelligent people have longer time horizons, a consistent finding in psychology and economics (Potrafke, 2012 and Shamosh and Gray, 2008) which enables them to better appreciate the increasing returns from innovation, entrepreneurship and risk-taking behavior. Second, in high-IQ population groups, knowledge spillovers from ‘social technologies’ (Nelson & Sampat, 2001) are likely to be greater.2 Third, since a key part of innovation involves scientific and engineering discovery and applications that are embodied in intellectual property via patents, we propose that more intelligent people are more able to undertake the considerable intellectual challenges associated with knowledge creation and innovation. Indeed, there is compelling evidence that intelligence has a direct effect on job performance when a job is inherently less trainable; such as jobs that require creative problem solving, independent decision making and innovative adaptation (Gottfredson, 2004). These are the very skills needed for productive work in an innovation system. The transmission mechanism from intelligence to economic growth, illustrating support for the proposition that innovation has a direct, positive effect on economic growth, is represented in Fig. 1.