innovation

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

Went down a rabbit hole for cross-industry innovations (when one industry borrows from another). Here are 8 gems. 1. James Dyson made a bagless vacuum after seeing how sawmills used cyclone force to eject sawdust. https://t.co/jre4FCdaVj

Take a coniferous forest. The hierarchy in scale of pine needle, tree crown, patch, stand, whole forest, and biome is also a time hierarchy. The needle changes within a year, the crown over several years, the patch over many decades, the stand over a couple of centuries, the forest over a thousand years, and the biome over ten thousand years. The... See more

The idea in my head vs the first draft https://t.co/Y9s0q5SVup

A yearning for innovation requires real exploration. It requires a persistent search to try (and fail) to move your understanding forward with a new tool, a new technique, a new insight. Sadly, the first innovation often isn’t even all that helpful, but may well provide a path to ones that are. This is an idea that Steven Johnson of Where Good... See more

One does not get a jet engine by improving the propeller. One does not breed horses until they give birth to a car. Telephones did not come from research on mail. Where on earth did the inspiration for the transistor and these other "leaps" of innovation come from to begin with?

Go all in on where you think the future is, regardless of where it currently is. Mute the world then build your own world.