Data used for "Three Centuries of Technological Innovation: Opportunity is the Mother of Invention"

This repository’s DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20598228

This repository contains data files and intermediate tables used in “Three Centuries of Technological Innovation: Opportunity is the Mother of Invention”

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2026

Authors: Jordan G. Okie^*, James H. Brown^**, Astrid Kodric-Brown, Joseph R. Burger, Tatiana P. Flanagan, Trevor S. Fristoe, Sean T. Hammond, Norman Mercado-Silva, Jeffrey C. Nekola, and Jennifer Richter

Corresponding author emails:  *Jordan.Okie@asu.edu, **jhbrown@unm.edu

Abstract:
What socio-ecological conditions nurture the ingenuity and collaborative interactions underlying transformative technological innovations? We compiled a dataset on more than 400 major technological inventions from 1690 to 1990 spanning seven categories (agriculture, armaments, information and communication, household, industry, medical, and transportation) and performed inductive macroecological analyses to address how attributes of inventors, teams, and their social and geographic environments contributed to the innovation of new technologies that have changed the way people live. The vast majority of inventions were attributed to single inventors of various ages. The frequency, size, and cultural diversity of teams increased in the 20^th Century, as did the proportion of inventions attributed to women and immigrants. A wide variety of environments acted as innovation hubs, including rural areas as well as specialized institutions and large cities. Invention rate (number of inventions per time period) peaked during the 1800s in cities, rural areas, and most categories but continued increasing over time in institutional environments and medical and communication technologies. The overall pattern across ages, genders, team attributes, environments, technological categories, and time periods supports the conclusion that opportunity, ingenuity, and environment all play key roles in the inventiveness phase of the innovation process: creative individuals in particular ecological environments and social settings come up with novel solutions to specific practical problems. Similar innovation patterns have been observed for tool use among non-human primates, highlighting unifying processes of innovation. Our macroecological approach offers valuable insights into the emergence and drivers of innovation and material culture.

List of files:
DataS1.txt: the entire database of technological inventions, their inventors, inventor characteristics, and environments for 1690-1990

DataS2.txt: global population size estimates for rural and urban environments for 1690-1990, based on data from Grauman (Grauman 1976)

table1_50yr: invention rate ("counts") and per capita invention rate for each 50 yr time bin in each technology category ("InnovationType")

table1_20yr: invention rate ("counts") and per capita invention rate for each 20 yr time bin in each technology category ("InnovationType") (fig S2)

table2_50yr: invention rate ('counts') and per capita invention rate for each 50 yr time bin in each Environment x InnovationType combination (fig 2 and 3)

table3_50yr: invention rate ("counts"), per capita invention rate, mean team size, and percentages of inventions fullfilling various criteria of team size, gender composition, and cultural diversity in each 50 yr time bin, for each Environment grouping (fig 2-4, fig S4-S5)

table3_20yr: invention rate ("counts"), per capita invention rate, mean team size, and percentages of inventions fullfilling various criteria of team size, gender composition, and cultural diversity in each 20 yr time bin, for each Environment grouping (fig S2)

table4_50yr: mean team size and counts and percentages of inventions fullfilling various criteria of team size, gender composition, and cultural diversity in each 50 yr time bin, aggregated across all Environment groupings (fig 4, fig S4)

table4_20yr: mean team size and counts and percentages of inventions fullfilling various criteria of team size, gender composition, and cultural diversity in each 20 yr time bin, aggregated across all Environment groupings

table5: mean team size and counts and percentages of observations in each 'Environment' grouping for whole timespan (fig 4)

table6: mean team size and counts and percentages across whole data set (regardless of environment or time) (fig 4)

References
Grauman, J. V. 1976. Orders of magnitude of the world’s urban population in history. Population Bulletin of the United Nations:16–33.

Okie, J. G., J. H. Brown, A. Kodric-Brown, J. R. Burger, T. P. Flanagan, T. S. Fristoe, S. T. Hammond, N. Mercado-Silva, J. C. Nekola, and J. Richter. 2026. Three Centuries of Technological Innovation: Opportunity is the Mother of Invention. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. In Press.