## How Innovation Works ### How Innovation Works  #### Metadata * Author: [[Matt Ridley]] * Full Title: How Innovation Works * Category: #books #### Highlights * That is to say, innovations, be they iPhones, ideas or eider ducklings, are all unlikely, improbable combinations of atoms and digital bits of information. (Location 107) * Innovation, like evolution, is a process of constantly discovering ways of rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance – and that happen to be useful. (Location 110) * Innovation, then, means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. (Location 125) * The chief way in which innovation changes our lives is by enabling people to work for each other. As I have argued before, the main theme of human history is that we become steadily more specialized in what we produce, and steadily more diversified in what we consume: (Location 189) * Most innovation is a gradual process. The modern obsession with disruptive innovation, a phrase coined by the Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in 1995, is misleading. Even when a new technology does upend an old one, as digital media has done to newspapers, the effect begins very slowly, gathers pace gradually and works by increments, not leaps and bounds. Innovation often disappoints in its early years, only to exceed expectations once it gets going, a phenomenon I call the Amara hype cycle, after Roy Amara, who first said that we underestimate the impact of innovation in the long run but overestimate it in the short run. (Location 196) * Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. PETER DRUCKER (Location 224) * They were not the first to notice that steam has the power to move things, of course. Toys built to exploit this principle were used in ancient Greece and Rome, and from time to time throughout the centuries clever engineers would build devices to use steam to push water about for fountains in gardens or some such trick. But it was Papin who first began to dream of harnessing this power for practical purposes rather than entertainment, Savery who turned a similar dream into a machine, albeit one that proved impractical, and Newcomen who made a practical machine that actually made a difference. (Location 250) # How Innovation Works  ## Metadata - Author: [[Matt Ridley]] - Full Title: How Innovation Works - Category: #books ## Highlights - That is to say, innovations, be they iPhones, ideas or eider ducklings, are all unlikely, improbable combinations of atoms and digital bits of information. (Location 107) - Innovation, like evolution, is a process of constantly discovering ways of rearranging the world into forms that are unlikely to arise by chance – and that happen to be useful. (Location 110) - Innovation, then, means finding new ways to apply energy to create improbable things, and see them catch on. (Location 125) - The chief way in which innovation changes our lives is by enabling people to work for each other. As I have argued before, the main theme of human history is that we become steadily more specialized in what we produce, and steadily more diversified in what we consume: (Location 189) - Most innovation is a gradual process. The modern obsession with disruptive innovation, a phrase coined by the Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in 1995, is misleading. Even when a new technology does upend an old one, as digital media has done to newspapers, the effect begins very slowly, gathers pace gradually and works by increments, not leaps and bounds. Innovation often disappoints in its early years, only to exceed expectations once it gets going, a phenomenon I call the Amara hype cycle, after Roy Amara, who first said that we underestimate the impact of innovation in the long run but overestimate it in the short run. (Location 196) - Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. PETER DRUCKER (Location 224) - They were not the first to notice that steam has the power to move things, of course. Toys built to exploit this principle were used in ancient Greece and Rome, and from time to time throughout the centuries clever engineers would build devices to use steam to push water about for fountains in gardens or some such trick. But it was Papin who first began to dream of harnessing this power for practical purposes rather than entertainment, Savery who turned a similar dream into a machine, albeit one that proved impractical, and Newcomen who made a practical machine that actually made a difference. (Location 250)