innovation
Iconic successes seemed outright strange at first: Amazon (wait days to receive a product you’ve never seen), eBay (buy beanie babies from someone thousands of miles away), Google (trust an algorithm to answer your questions), LinkedIn (publicly post your resume), Facebook (share personal updates with people you haven’t seen in years), Airbnb (stay... See more
Philip Clark • The end of incrementalism: how AI will reward maximalist start-ups
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
Almost everything that makes up our world first appeared in a solitary head—the innovations, the tools, the images, the stories, the prophecies, and religions—it did not come from the center, it came from those who ran from it.
Substack • Notes | Substack


Betting on Unknown Unknowns - by Alexandr Wang Betting on Unknown Unknowns
Alexandr Wangalexw.substack.comP&G used to have somebody in charge of what they called commercial innovation, which is broadly defined as selling your product in different ways, without fundamentally changing the product itself.
Rail travel is a great example of an industry that is ripe for commercial innovation.
In Germany they have the BahnCard. A 25, 50, or 100 BahnCard are... See more
Rail travel is a great example of an industry that is ripe for commercial innovation.
In Germany they have the BahnCard. A 25, 50, or 100 BahnCard are... See more