The Heaps’ law, which characterises the growth of novelties, has triggered new mathematical descriptions, based on urn models or on random walks, of the way we explore the world. However, an often overlooked aspect is that novelties can also arise as …
Our network of acquaintances determines how we get exposed to ideas, products, or cultural artworks (books, music, movies, etc.). Though this principle is part of our common sense, little is known about the specific pathways through which our …
Adoption processes in socio-technological systems have been widely studied both empirically and theoretically. The way in which social norms, behaviors, and even items such as books, music or other commercial or technological product spread in a …
Innovation is the driving force of human progress. Recent urn models reproduce well the dynamics through which the discovery of a novelty may trigger further ones, in an expanding space of opportunities, but neglect the effects of social …
We introduce a model for the emergence of innovations, in which cognitive processes are described as random walks on the network of links among ideas or concepts, and an innovation corresponds to the first visit of a node. The transition matrix of …