Reading A Cumulative Culture Theory for Developer Problem-Solving, C. Hicks:

We hypothesize that understanding how collective solutions are shared between developers, and keeping such transmission functional, may prove a more powerful explanatory factor in technology innovation than any individual cognition or performance variance among developers. It is also likely more accessible to those who wish to intervene on and increase technical innovation. While interventions attempting to improve working memory have often proven impractical, unethical, or unlikely to succeed, interventions attempting to improve cycles of adaptive response between individual-and-social systems, incorporating improvements to the psychological context that promotes social sharing and teaching, have emerged as intervention targets which associate with lasting objective outcomes in achievement and performance (see Walton, 2014; Hicks, 2024; Lichand et al., 2024).

Culture creates innovation.

Another important aspect of cumulative culture is that it helps individuals both learn from and imitate processes of creativity. For instance, developers’ participation in interest-driven technical communities which share niche, unusual, or obscure solutions may bolster developer problem-solving along with well-documented social benefits from support, role modeling, and sense of belonging (Townley, 2020; Trinkenreich et al., 2023). Alongside these social benefits, exposure to infrequently-noticed features of a problem can cognitively benefit developer problem-solving because this helps individuals to overcome functional fixedness, i.e., the cognitive bias which discourages people from seeing novel solutions (McCaffrey, 2012).

This is one of the reasons why I run the JavaScript meetups and Scottish Technology Club. I want to be exposed to technical excellence, creativity and innovation. Sharing and supporting with a community is a key mechanism. If we all do it, Scotland improves, we create and attract more opportunities.