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The human roots of innovation

Our NEA Research Lab in Innovation is exploring the human-centered origins of technological advancements to better understand how human feelings and senses are the spark for seeing novel possibilities. Our lab’s da Vinci’s Cube model of innovation extends  Pasteur’s Quadrant to include the role of aesthetics, perception, and emotion in innovation. By including human-centered sources of innovation, da Vinci’s Cube offers a comprehensive framework to guide advances in higher education, workforce development, and research design. Our transdisciplinary team from Virginia Tech and Leonardo is conducting interviews to analyze and map to the da Vinci’s Cube model and developing case studies of arts-originated innovations from the Leonardo Archives. Our project is mapping the sources of innovation as they flow between the arts, design, sciences, and technology.

Figure 1. The da Vinci’s Cube model of innovation, extending Pasteur’s Quadrant to include emotions, senses, and perception

How does extending Pasteur’s Quadrant better account for the sources of innovation?

With funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, our research lab is developing a new model of innovation—“da Vinci’s Cube" —that extends Stokes’s Pasteur's Quadrant to include a dimension concerned with emotions, senses, and empathy, which we call "contemplation of sentiment" (Figure 1). By adding this new dimension, we highlight human-centered design and arts-informed perspectives that are crucial for identifying opportunities for innovation and generating ideas for those opportunities.  The da Vinci’s Cube model will also provide guidance for higher education, talent recruitment and retention, and product strategy.

What steps are we taking to provide evidence that the da Vinci’s Cube model represents the sources of innovation?

Figure 2. Entrepreneurs, company leaders, and leaders from Higher Education, Information Technology, Business Development, Manufacturing, Communications, and Biomedical see value in Contemplation of Sentiment for themselves as individuals, for company strategy, and in hiring employees.

What steps are we taking to provide evidence that the da Vinci’s Cube model represents the sources of innovation?

We are interviewing industry leaders about

  1. Their professional career journey
  2. How they see themselves and their organization in the da Vinci’s Cube
  3. How it impacts the value their organization brings to their customers
  4. The human capital of their organization. As part of the interview, we ask them to place themselves and their companies in the da Vinci’s Cube based on how they see the relative importance of each of the three axes in their work and in providing value to their customers and communities. Data analysis was conducted using both deductive codes derived from the axes of the da Vinci’s Cube and open-ended coding to identify emergent themes. We address the research question, “What is the connection between artists, designers, and broad societal innovation in relation to economic and job growth?”

McNair, L.D., T. Martin, B. Knapp, T. Rassi, J. Mathai, and B. Nepal. 2024. da Vinci’s Cube: Reframing Innovation in ECE Curricula. In Proceedings of the IEEE Frontiers in Education conference, presented in Washington, DC, Oct 15, 2024.

Knapp, B., T.L. Martin, L.D. McNair, and T. Rassi. The da Vinci’s Cube: A New Model for Understanding Innovation at the Edges of Arts and Science. Forthcoming in Integrative Contemporary Art and Science Practices edited by J.D. Talasek and Barbara Stauffer.

Nepal, B. and Mathai, J. Forthcoming, Initial Developments of da Vinci’s Cube: An Expansion of Pasteur’s Quadrant. IEEE Xplore. Presented at the MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference, October 12, 2024.

Knapp, B., Martin, T., McNair, L., Mathai, J., Rassi, T. DaVinci’s Cube: Examining Art’s Role in Technological Innovation. Presented at the 2023 a2ru National Conference: “What’s Next?: Imagining New Educational Futures for Ourselves, Our Communities and Our Planet” on October 19, 2024.