I’ve loved reading Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works” so far. A point he makes emphatically is that the nature of innovation is always misunderstood.
Crucial innovations are often thought to have been accelerated by war. However, most innovation has happened incrementally and has been driven forward by many people.
For example, aircraft fatalities have gone from 3000 people per trillion miles to 50 people per trillion miles between 1970 and the 2010s. An incredible advance – it is 700 safer to be on a jet vs. to drive a car.
This happened not because of one person -but because of many experiments in manufacturing and crew communication best practices.
This is how the jet engine, the car, the electric bulb, and so many other inventions became part of our daily life.
