How Innovation Works

Starred review from March 1, 2020
An enthusiastic history of human technical innovation. Innovation is not the same as invention, writes bestselling science writer Ridley. Innovation rarely proceeds from a single genius and takes much longer. It resembles Darwinian evolution, a process of "rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance--and that happen to be useful....And innovation is potentially infinite because even if it runs out of new things to do, it can always find ways to do the same things more quickly or for less energy." Throughout the book, the author delivers fascinating histories of technology that we take for granted. Many hands contributed to the developments of the steam engine, automobile, and computer. Ridley makes a convincing case that obsessive trial and error works better than inspiration and illustrates with insightful accounts of Edison, the Wright brothers, and Marconi. Some breakthroughs are inexplicable. People hauled luggage for a century, but the wheeled suitcase only appeared in the 1970s. Perhaps one of the greatest underrated innovations is corrugated sheet metal, a mainstay of slum housing around the world. Indoor flush toilets existed throughout history, but they smelled. Carrying a chamber pot outside worked better. The U-trap, a bend to prevent gases from backing up, started a revolution. Ridley's readership will not be surprised to learn that innovation flourishes where individuals are free to experiment with minimal interference from two large, unimaginative institutions: big business and government. He maintains that they worked together for a generation to suppress cellphones, which were feasible after World War II. In his opinion, the 20th century's sole innovative source of large-scale energy, nuclear power, is in decline, mostly due to government regulation. He contends that patent laws do more harm than good and has little respect for activist zealots, especially when they ignore scientific evidence, a category in which he includes both opponents of genetically modified food and vaccination. Opinionated, often counterintuitive, full of delicious stories, always provocative.

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