Saved by Alex Dobrenko and
How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
In a famous essay called ‘I, Pencil’, Leonard Reed pointed out that a simple pencil is made by many different people, some cutting trees down, others mining graphite, others working in pencil factories, or in marketing or management, yet others growing coffee for the lumberjacks and managers to drink. Amid this vast team of collaborating people, no... See more
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
What explains this speed and breadth of innovation fury? In a word, work. Chinese entrepreneurs are dedicated to the 9–9–6 week: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. That was what Americans were like too when they changed the world (Edison demanded inhuman hours from his employees); and Germans when they were among the most innovative people; and Bri
... See moreMatt Ridley • 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.
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
clearer. Innovation happens, as I put it a decade ago, when ideas have sex. It occurs where people meet and exchange goods, services and thoughts. This explains why innovation happens in places where trade and exchange are frequent and not in isolated or underpopulated places: California rather than North Korea,
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Neither the founders of Yahoo! nor those of Google set out in search of search engines. The founders of Instagram were trying to make a gaming app. The founders of Twitter were trying to invent a way for people to find podcasts.
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Kendrick and Eldering received very little recognition for this work, turning down most requests from the media even decades later, and little financial reward. They shared their methods and formulae freely all over the world. They did everything right: chose a vital problem, did the crucial experiments to solve it, worked with communities to test ... See more
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
The most astonishing case is the electric light bulb, the invention of which was independently achieved by twenty-one people. There may have been a bit of snooping by some of these into the work of the others, and collaboration between them in a few cases, but mostly it is hard to find any evidence they even knew of each other’s work. Likewise, the... See more
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Again and again in the history of innovation, it is the people who find ways to drive down the costs and simplify the product who make the biggest difference.
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
According to one estimate, per unit of power, coal kills nearly 2,000 times as many people as nuclear; bioenergy fifty times; gas forty times; hydro fifteen times; solar five times (people fall off roofs installing panels) and even wind power kills nearly twice as many as nuclear. These numbers include the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Extr... See more
Matt Ridley • How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
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.