Lexicon
Strategic Ignorance
The deliberate choice not to know certain things because the knowledge would be harmful or limiting. Sometimes not knowing allows for better outcomes than knowing.
Upward Spiral
A self-reinforcing cycle of positive change where each improvement creates conditions that enable further improvements, leading to accelerating progress.
Positive Deviance
When someone succeeds against the odds by taking an unusual approach that defies conventional wisdom or standard practice. The successful outlier who finds a better way.
Wicked Problems
Complex challenges that resist simple solutions because they involve multiple interdependent factors, changing requirements, and no clear right answer. Each attempt to solve them reveals or creates new problems.
Infinite Games
Games played not to win but to keep playing, where the goal is to perpetuate the game and invite others in. Contrasts with finite games that have clear winners and endpoints.
Explore vs Exploit
The fundamental tension between searching for new possibilities (explore) and taking advantage of known opportunities (exploit). A key tradeoff in any system of learning or adaptation.
Global Maxima
The highest possible peak in a landscape of possibilities, as opposed to local maxima which are just the highest points nearby. Finding true global maxima requires looking beyond immediate improvements.
Miracle Years
Rare periods of extraordinary breakthrough and progress, when multiple advances combine to create unprecedented possibilities. Historical moments of accelerated development and discovery.
The Adjacent Possible
The set of next immediate possibilities that are one step away from what currently exists. It represents the potential futures that are accessible from the present moment, like doors that open as you walk through a branching building. Each step into the adjacent possible unlocks new adjacent possibles, expanding the frontier of what's achievable.
Hauntology
A concept developed by Mark Fisher describing how the present is haunted by "lost futures" - possibilities that were once imagined but never materialized. In the context of innovation funding, it describes how past models of success continue to shape and constrain current possibilities.
Institutional Hauntology
The specific way funding institutions become trapped by their own past successes, creating systems that prioritize reproducing established patterns rather than enabling genuine innovation. Manifests in practices like favoring older researchers or established firms.
Temporal Paralysis
A condition where institutions lose their ability to generate genuinely new possibilities, instead becoming trapped in cycles of reproducing past patterns. In innovation funding, this appears as the systematic preference for "proven" approaches over novel ones.
R01 Grant
The primary research grant mechanism used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), traditionally considered the first major milestone of an independent scientific career. The increasing age at first R01 receipt (from mid-30s to mid-40s) represents a key indicator of temporal distortion in academic funding.
Venture Feedback Arbitrage
A structural problem where venture capital firms optimize for shorter-term, measurable signals (like reputation and deal flow) rather than long-term innovation potential, creating self-reinforcing barriers to novel approaches.
Dense Intermediate Rewards
Short-term, measurable metrics in venture capital (such as network effects or deal access) that can be optimized for, potentially at the expense of supporting genuinely novel innovation.
Temporal Pincer Movement
A dual compression of innovation opportunities where both academic funding and venture capital have simultaneously aged at opposite ends of the pipeline. Named after the military maneuver of attacking from two directions simultaneously.
Temporal Phase Mismatch
The specific predicament faced by late bloomers, where their chronological age conflicts with institutional expectations about career progression and expertise accumulation. Creates situations where individuals are simultaneously "too old" and "too young" for different opportunities.
Temporal Credit Assignment Problem
The challenge in venture capital of connecting actions to outcomes across long time horizons (typically 7-10 years), making it difficult to optimize decision-making processes.
Temporal-Experiential Refuges
Protected spaces designed to allow innovation to proceed according to its natural rhythms rather than institutional imperatives. Examples include new funding models like Arc Institute and New Science.
Inclusive Temporal Design
An approach to creating funding structures that explicitly accounts for and supports different temporal experiences of innovation, from rapid iteration to long-term exploration.
Mega-Round Phenomenon
The trend toward increasingly large funding rounds in venture capital, which can promote capital inefficiency and reduce opportunities for novel approaches.
First-Time Fund Managers
Venture capitalists raising their first fund, whose declining success in fundraising (from $20B to $4B) represents another aspect of the system's bias toward established players.
Focused Research Organizations (FROs)
A new institutional model attempting to bridge the gap between academic research and practical innovation, though often still constrained by traditional credentialing requirements.