innovation
It’s not that entrepreneurs are natural rule-breakers. Rather … they want self-direction. They aren’t going to take the world at face value. They have to figure it out for themselves.
The answer, I think, is what it almost always is: that inventors are simply extremely rare. People can have all the incentives, all the materials, all the mechanical skills, and even all the right general notions of how things work. As we’ve seen, even Savery himself was apparently inspired by the same ancient experiment as everyone else who worked... See more
Anton Howes • Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part III
That right there is the recipe for genuine innovation:
- Embrace uncertainty and the fact one doesn’t know the future.
- Understand that people are inventing things — and not just technologies, but also use cases — constantly.
- Remember that the art comes in editing after the invention, not before.
Stratechery by Ben Thompson • Stratechery by Ben Thompson
