‘Ridley is spot-on when it comes to the vital ingredients for success’ Sir James Dyson

Building on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation and how we need to change our thinking on the subject.

Innovation is the most important event of the modern era, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living conditions and disruptions in our society. It is innovation that will shape the 21st century. However, innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by politicians and entrepreneurs.

Matt Ridley argues that we should see innovation as a gradual, bottom-up process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than as a deliberate process developed according to a plan. Innovation differs significantly from invention because it is the conversion of inventions into practical and accessible things for people. It accelerates in some areas and slows down in others. It is always a collective and collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, and not a matter of solitary genius. Even if it cannot be properly modeled by economists, it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.

Ridley draws these and other lessons from the vivid stories of dozens of innovations – from steam engines to search engines – how they started and why they succeeded or failed. Pages: 432, Dimensions: 12.9x12.9cm