innovation

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

One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea... See more

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