Semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution
cognition · PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) · 2026
A 1,243-person experiment plus agent-based model from Karolinska Institutet and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam shows that without semantic knowledge — the felt map of how concepts connect — humans innovate no better than random bots, even with full social learning. Semantic depth roughly doubles novel innovations when paired with peer visibility.
Authors
Anil Yaman, Shen Tian, Björn Lindström
Research lens
A 1,243-person experiment plus agent-based model from Karolinska Institutet and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam shows that without semantic knowledge — the felt map of how concepts connect — humans innovate no better than random bots, even with full social learning. Semantic depth roughly doubles novel innovations when paired with peer visibility.
- cognition
- creativity
- cultural-evolution
- semantic-knowledge
- workplace
- innovation
- social-learning