Characterizing the dynamics of innovation in human activities and biological systems

Innovations and novelties concern, at a fundamental level, human activities, social behaviours, and biological systems. The vast majority of these systems are intrinsically open systems: new, previously unknown elements may continuously emerge. Statistical and dynamical regularities are shared by systems featuring innovation, pointing to general, i.e., non-system-specific, mechanisms underlying the innovation process. We will deepen the study of a class of Pólya-urn-based models that reproduce many of the empirical behaviours observed in real-world systems, while searching for novel relevant observables to characterise the latter.