Necessity is pointed out by technicians and experts as the mother of invention and, consequently, so it is for technological advancements.
Unmet needs lead to innovation, stimulate development and cause changes. Necessity and innovation are, though, bound to the unexpected and surprise factor - the chance.
Chance had been always associated to chaos and disorder and it had been seen as a damaging element which cuts back on the efficiency of any system. However, this conception has changed dreadfully in the last twenty years. It has been demonstrated that chance may improve the effectiveness of our perception and create order. Chance is constantly surprising us in physics but the thing is that it goes even further, reaching a variety of fields such as molecular biology, the theory of evolution, economy or sociology.
Jacques Monod, father of molecular biology and Nobel Prize for his discoveries on the genetic control of the enzymes and the synthesis of the virus, headed his book Chance and Necessity with a sentence of Democritus: “Everything in the universe is the result of chance and necessity”. In 1971 culture was revolutionized by Monod’s work and since then, chance has been a widely discussed question, which seems to clash with the scientific models but actually it comes into play in our own systems of reason and the way we acquire, process and generate knowledge.
Chance is present almost everywhere in nature: so as to develop, any cell and its components require the environment to be in constant activity. It has been confirmed that chance has taken part in roughly 1/5 of 20th century discoveries and, in fact, what has been found what was not being searched. For example, Viagra was the result of a research to regulate hypertension and Penicillin was found by mistake when Alexander Fleming, who was doing research into flu, left some cultures outdoors; these got contaminated and were covered with mold. He thus discovered that this fungus was capable of inhibiting the growth of the bacterium.
The focus of Monod’s research and thought can be summarized as “chance lies in the origin of every innovation, of every creation in the biosphere.” Therefore, “interactions are involved in every phenomenon, every event, every knowledge. Change is the source of every innovation, of all the creations of the world.” Chance and necessity: if chance does not take part, innovation is less likely.
The possibility of discovering something thanks to chance must be connected to the fact that different people, professionals from different fields, meet to work together. A fluent interaction with the environment is required to innovate. This way, chance and uncertainty turn into sources of possibilities.
That’s why clusters in general, and bioclusters in particular, are the most innovative model of organization; organizations of new economical systems like Biopol’H, which act as the driving force between the reality and the aspirations.
