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How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Greatness Without Goals
joincolossus.comThe steam engine and the breakthrough to an energy-rich economy set off such a process of endogenous growth that it has so far lasted for more than two centuries. Global GDP per capita, which hardly budged for centuries before the age of industrialization, has been rising rapidly and fairly consistently since 1820.
Jeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
“So often,” says Ian Ross, who worked in Jack Morton’s department at Bell Labs doing transistor development in the 1950s, “the original concept of what an innovation will do”—the replacement of the vacuum tube, in this case—“frequently turns out not to be the major impact.”1 The transistor’s greatest value was not as a replacement for the old but a
... See moreJon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Regarding economic factors, it seems that there needs to be a certain level of surplus to support the culture-wide research and development effort that creates inventions. Note that Karl von Drais was a baron who apparently had a cushy job and invented in his spare time. This is common of researchers of that era: they were often aristocrats or othe... See more