Invention is a collective action
summary
Argues that inventions arise from long chains of prior work and shared improvement rather than lone geniuses, citing punched cards (Jacquard loom → program storage) and James Watt’s steam condenser as concrete cases, and using Rogers’ adoption curve and Moore’s crossing the chasm to explain diffusion. Uses Robert Allen’s blast-furnace study where rising chimney height proxy tracks incremental, published improvements, and compares the resulting network effects to today’s open source / cloud-native ecosystem.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:27History of invention
- 1:12Nikola Tesla
- 2:30Thomas Edison
- 3:30James Watt
- 4:35James Burke
- 5:30Jacquard loom
- 7:08Rogers theory
- 8:04The innovators dilemma
- 9:45The chasm
- 10:44Geographical diffusion
- 12:53Consumer technology adoption curves
- 14:06European patents
- 14:33Robert Allen
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