Systemic View of Creativity

After having introduced the systemic perspective of creativity in my last 3 articles, today we will share the story, written by Juan Rodrigo, about the invention of penicillin, a fantastic example of the complexity of innovation processes.

The story begins in 1921, with Fleming studying the life of bacteria, and ends 21 years later, with the start of mass production of antibiotics. In between, 2 wars, and 3 people to invent penicillin.

Source: Rodrigo, J. (2019). Fleming. In The Creativity Virus. Porto: Ed. Mindshake. pp.103-106.

FLEMING 

21 years, two wars, and three people to invent penicillin. 

In the literature on creativity it is common to find references to Fleming, mainly focused on highlighting the role of chance in the discovery of penicillin, and illustrate what has been called “serendipity”: A coincidence, a fortuitous fact, that a shrewd observer is capable of turning into a relevant finding. But in the reference text the focus is not on creativity, but on the explanation of the contribution of fungi to our health, and on how humans can get to benefit from everything that exists in nature. And that is why, perhaps, it is easier to see in all its richness the process and the conditions of an innovation that has saved and will save the lives of millions of animals. Including humans. An innovation that occurs, like all, in the interaction between knowledge, discoveries and inventions and in a social context that favours or hinders its development and the speed of its acceptance. 

The explanation begins with a reference to the moment in which the work of Fleming takes place, marked by a deep interest in the scientific community for infectious diseases, and by the need to find a remedy for them. And with this reference, the importance of some fundamental elements for innovation is found: the interest, the desire, the work, the dedication and the will to achieve in a determined field of thought and action.

Fleming, by now in his forties, looked for "substances that could destroy colonies of bacteria and that at the same time were innocuous for the human being". And he did it by experimenting with products that could achieve the extinction of the bacteria that he cultivated in his laboratory. 

Apparently the change - or the disorder – was caused by two accidents which allowed Fleming to find relationships that otherwise would not have occurred. The first of these led to the discovery of lysozyme, an enzyme that damages and destroys bacterial cells and is present in human mucous membranes. Mucous that Fleming "dropped" in some bacterial culture, taking advantage of a common cold or perhaps a sneeze. From that chance, from that mistake, or from that disorder, the first successful observation of Fleming arose. And although lysozyme attacks a few not particularly dangerous bacteria, the value of that chance discovery would certainly accentuate Fleming's ability to be alert to the unexpected. And seven years later, in September 1928, an opportunity presented itself again to him: A petri dish prepared for the cultivation of bacteria was dirty, contaminated by a common mould: the penicillium notatum. Fleming noticed that the bacterial growth had stopped in the contact area of the bacterial culture with the mould. And from that observation interacting with years of work, knowledge and failures, the intuition emerged that the fungus was producing something that eliminated bacteria. Confirmation of intuition came after more cultures, and the proof that penicillin killed bacteria.

Five months later Fleming presented his results, but he did not "merit the attention of his colleagues" who attributed to the discovery very limited possibilities, perhaps associated with the difficulty of producing it and of obtaining sufficient quantities. 

And eight years later, in 1936 and in the Department of Pathology of the University of Oxford, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey met. A German biochemist and an Australian pharmacologist who worked on the investigation of bactericidal substances, and who were interested in the research conducted by Fleming. With more advanced technical means, they managed to isolate a small amount of penicillin, much more powerful than the extract obtained by Fleming. With this achievement, animal experimentation began, and they discovered that penicillin was "effective against many types of bacteria and that it lacked toxic effects for mammals”. 

In 1940, faced with the impossibility of obtaining funding and resources in England for the production of penicillin in large quantities, Florey traveled to the United States to seek that essential help. When the USA entered the war penicillin was declared “a priority product of war". And in 1942 the main problems for production were solved. And the investigation had located another type of fungus that contributed to production two hundred times stronger than the one discovered by Fleming. After the war, the pharmaceutical industry could produce enough penicillin to treat seven million patients annually. And the era of antibiotics began. Fleming, Chain and Florey received the Nobel Prize in 1945. The history of penicillin is much more than the history of an accident. Much more than that of a coincidence accurately perceived, or of an incubation and a fortuitous illumination. If we analyse it with a broader perspective than that of the mere serendipity involved in the discovery, we will verify that it is the history of a collective and diachronic process, in which some of the factors that make possible the ideation of new knowledge are perfectly defined, and its transformation into useful solutions that are accepted and valued by society. In innovations.

CONCLUSIONS 

Ideas emerge from knowledge systems. The idea of penicillin is the idea of a system capable of preventing the growth of colonies of bacteria that killed millions of people each year. The discovery by Fleming is a solution to a problem formulated within an evolving knowledge system, on which Fleming sets to work in 1921. 

A problem already defined, already formulated, that remains open even today, for which other solutions have been found, and for which new options will emerge. Fleming's discovery was based on a shrewd observation of a fortuitous event; but only someone who was working on that problem could have associated the chance observation to the content of the investigation. To the content of the knowledge system in which he was working. 

The idea of penicillin, the finding of penicillin, might have arisen at another time, in another area. And it would not have flourished when it did, without the intervention of many other factors unrelated to Fleming, but belonging to the knowledge system in which Fleming worked. A system that remains active and productive, and in which we have to include, for justice but also for coherence, those who preceded Fleming, Chain and Florey, and those who continued and supported the development of the work. 

We can attribute the find to Fleming. But from a process analysis, we can only attribute a moment of the ideation phase to him. That which, from a classical paradigm, is identified with the moment of enlightenment. But we can also see Fleming, Chain, and Florey, as moments of an evolving system that started much earlier and has not yet stopped. Or as parts of a knowledge system in diachronic evolution, in which new knowledge emerges. New ideas. A creative system. A system of innovation. 

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With this story we finish our series of articles about the systemic view of creativity.