How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

Thomas Edison perfected the light bulb not by inspiration but by perspiration: he and his team tested 6,000 different materials for the filament.

Amara’s Law states that people tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.

But, hang on, didn’t Thomas Edison invent the light bulb? Yes, he did. But so did Marcellin Jobard in Belgium; and so did William Grove, Fredrick de Moleyns and Warren de la Rue (and Swan) in England. So too did Alexander Lodygin in Russia, Heinrich Göbel in Germany, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin in France, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans in Canada, H... See more

Again and again, simultaneous invention marks the progress of technology as if there is something ripe about the moment. It does not necessarily imply plagiarism.

The fossil-fuel dependence of the modern world is roughly the same today – at about 85 per cent of primary energy – as it was twenty years ago. The vast majority of society’s need for energy is supplied by heat. What will eventually depose the ‘impellent use of fire’, that strange link between heat and work that came into the lives of humanity arou... See more

So the source of the invention of chlorination, like that of vaccination, is enigmatic and confused. Only in retrospect can it be seen as a disruptive and successful innovation that saved millions of lives. It evolved rather slowly, probably from serendipitous beginnings in largely mistaken ideas.

Innovations come in many forms, but one thing they all have in common, and which they share with biological innovations created by evolution, is that they are enhanced forms of improbability.

Virtually all the gigantic amounts of energy that go into making my life and yours happen come from the conversion of heat to work.

Innovation happens when people are free to think, experiment and speculate. It happens when people can trade with each other. It happens where people are relatively prosperous, not desperate. It is somewhat contagious. It needs investment. It generally happens in cities. And so on.

It runs mostly on trial and error, the human version of natural selection. And it usually stumbles on great breakthroughs when looking for something else: it is heavily serendipitous.