Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity.
Invention is incremental—a series of slight and constant changes.
Kevin Ashton • How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery
The adjacent possible is as much about limits as it is about openings. At every moment in the timeline of an expanding biosphere, there are doors that cannot be unlocked yet. In human culture, we like to think of breakthrough ideas as sudden accelerations on the timeline, where a genius jumps ahead fifty years and invents something that normal mind
... See moreSteven Johnson • Where Good Ideas Come From
The greatest innovations have come from relentless experimentation coupled with continuous improvement.
Vaughn Vernon • Strategic Monoliths and Microservices: Driving Innovation Using Purposeful Architecture (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Vernon))
Bell Labs had the advantage of necessity; its new inventions, as one of Kelly’s deputies, Harald Friis, once said, “always originated because of a definite need.”
Jon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Innovation, then, means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. It means much more than invention, because the word implies developing an invention to the point where it catches on because it is sufficiently practical, affordable, reliable and ubiquitous to be worth using.