| Edition |
First UnitedStates edition. |
| Descript |
406 pages ; 24 cm |
| Note |
Nonfiction. |
|
"Originally published as How innovation works: serendipity, energy and the saving of time in Great Britain in 2020 by 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers"--Title page verso. |
| Bibliog. |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [375]-388) and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction: The Infinite Improbability Drive -- Energy -- Public health -- Transport -- Food -- Low-technology innovation -- Communication and computing -- Prehistoric innovation -- Innovation's essentials -- The economics of innovation -- Fakes, frauds, fads and failures -- Resistance to innovation -- An innovation famine. |
| Summary |
.Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time. It still cannot be modeled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations, how they started and why they succeeded or failed. Some of the innovation stories he tells are about steam engines, jet engines, search engines, airships, coffee, potatoes, vaping, vaccines, cuisine, antibiotics, mosquito nets, turbines, propellers, fertilizer, zero, computers, dogs, farming, fire, genetic engineering, gene editing, container shipping, railways, cars, safety rules, wheeled suitcases, mobile phones, corrugated iron, powered flight, chlorinated water, toilets, vacuum cleaners, shale gas, the telegraph, radio, social media, block chain, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence, fake bomb detectors, phantom games consoles, fraudulent blood tests, hyperloop tubes, herbicides, copyright, and even life itself. |
| Subject |
Diffusion of innovations -- History.
|
|
Technological innovations -- Social aspects.
|
| ISBN/ISSN |
0062916599 hardcover |
|
9780062916594 hardcover |
|
