In James' Burke's popular television series, Connections (PBS, 1979), he focused primarily on series of "serendipitous" events that led scientific discoverers or inventors to the development of major ideas or machines that have had a great impact on modern life, such as the the atomic bomb, telecommunications, computers, production lines, jet aircraft, plastics, rocketry, and television.

In each Connections episode -- and in each chapter of his bestselling book of the same name -- Burke focuses on exploring the presumably unrelated and seemingly unlikely series of events that lead, step by step, from one historical starting point, through development of this or related ideas, to the eventual "connection" of one or more of these ideas into a specific, modern technological application. His general focus is on the branching path of possibilities and connections that lead up to specific discoveries.

However, in comments that are interspersed throughout his chapters, Burke's overall theory of change becomes more clear. Burke's "Web" theory can be summarized as a belief that scientific discoveries (or technological advances) come about by means of a process that involves an interconnected "web" of knowledge and events. The point at which a new idea, or a realization of a significant connection, occurs is a moment when someone makes the right "connection" between things that often have been present or publicly available for a long time, just not in that particular context, combination, or application.

Burke is interested in the "innovators" more than the process of diffusion of their ideas or the products developed using their ideas, which is Rogers' primary interest. Burke particularly concentrates his focus on how the general knowledge-base (or at least the knowledge base of the scientific community of whatever historical period he's discussing) advanced just far enough so that -- when the right person was at the right time and observed the right thing -- that person made the all-important "connection" of the various loose ends into a new way of thinking about something or saw how to make a machine or other practical application of the idea.

Here is where Burke most closely agrees with Rogers: "Break-through" innovators are generally better educated people. Burke focuses on historically significant innovators whose ideas were well known to others in the scientific or educational community and recognized as advances. Rogers, by contrast, uses the term "innovators" to discuss those in a community who first adopt new ideas or equipment, recognizing or anticipating that these are advances that will bring some specific benefit to them or to their work. Burke's historic "innovators" are often members of the scientific community of their day, often people who know as much as is available to be known in the time in which they live. These are people who are routinely looking for new ideas, and thus they know a good idea when they stumble over one. However, the diffusion of the idea after the innovator gets it and does something specific with it is not Burke's major interest, as it is Rogers'.

Burke's focus is on the creative idea or the adaptive leap -- how one idea "connects" to another -- by (usually) one person, a "discoverer" or an inventor (or, since the "connection" is often how an idea or apparatus in use in another field can be adapted to a new application, this person is a "re-inventor," in Rogers' terms).

Burke, metaphorically, is saying that the "knowledge base" of any one time is like a "sea of knowledge" that everyone works and lives in. As Burke sees it, we're all connected in a "mental plasma" of diffused ideas, applications, and understandings -- as if, in our modern culture, we were all part of some amorphous, amoebic creature. Innovators, generally better educated and looking for new ideas, are on the outer boundaries of this general-culture membrane. When they come in contact with a "new" idea, the innovators recognize that this is a new connection -- and, by a sort of intellectual osmosis, they pull the new idea "through the membrane," and introduce it into the diffused "plasma of ideas" that everyone shares.

The "interconnectedness" of ideas and the "serendipitous" nature of innovation has interested many thinkers, particularly with the occurrence and the acceleration of the changes and inventions of the Industrial Revolution. Hegel, for example, noted that the "zeitgeist" or spirit of an age, being more oriented, for example, toward change, encouraged more change. He also noted, as an interesting phenomenon, that the more strongly the "spirit of an age" favored certain types of advances, the more likely several innovators -- even if they and their research interests were unknown to one another -- were to come to the same conclusions, or even to figure out similar practical adaptations of an idea almost simultaneously.

Carl Jung, describing the same phenomenon in the cultural or social-psychology arena, described this as "synchronicity," attributing the impact and subsequent diffusion or adoption (in Rogers' terms) of "new" cultural ideas or their symbolic representations as evidence that an innovator (often an artist or writer) was often uniquely gifted in tapping a "collective unconscious" of ideas, symbolic meanings, myths, and psychological pre-sets shared by all humans. Jung also said that -- psychologically speaking -- there is no such thing as "coincidence."

Arthur Koestler, in his book investigating the origins of innovative thinking, The Act of Creation, says that in order for a truly creative idea to occur, there must be an almost literal "creative leap," a cross-over of ideas from one "plane" (or context) of thinking to another. For example, Koestler points out that such a "collision" of contexts is absolutely essential for humor to work, and that such a clash of contexts must be a creative "surprise" in order to catch us unawares and make us laugh. (As the great actor Sir Donald Wolfit said, sighing, on his deathbed, "Death is easy, but comedy is hard.")

Burke would agree with all of these ideas. In fact, he might find it amusing that -- since these famous thinkers were his predecessors -- the popularity of his Connections series (Burke is into his third series, Connections3, started in 1997 on The Discovery Channel) can, in part, be attributed to the fact that the ideas of these and other thinkers, ideas he is building on, have been diffused widely in general culture.

While Burke (and Rogers) would agree that no one can educate a person to be an innovator, both agree that education plays a pivotal role in preparing someone to become an innovator. The educated person, one who has a larger-than-average "knowledge base," is far more likely to be one who generates a "new" idea (or recognizes an idea as a new "connection" and adapts or uses it for an innovative purpose), and who understands the ways in which it is a new idea and its implications for advancement, improvement, or change in whatever context to which it is being applied.

Interestingly enough, constructivist theory -- the currently popular theory in education that focuses on helping children to construct meaning from their own, authentic experiences -- is particularly appropriate to the training of a future generation of innovators. Constructivism focuses on helping students to recognize implications of ideas and the contexts to which that idea may apply. Burke, however, would probably caution that -- although authenticity and immediacy of experiential education models is important -- content, or the "knowledge base" (particularly of core-curriculum subjects such as math, science, language arts, and history), is also critically important.

Innovators of tomorrow must be both aware and knowledgeable -- and both of these "preparation areas" are the primary concerns of education.