Have you ever envied those geniuses who discovered the laws of nature while doing everyday activities? It would seem that Archimedes invented the principle of buoyancy by jumping out of the bath, while Newton discovered gravity when he was hit on the head by a falling apple while dozing under an apple tree. It would be wonderful if we could come up with a solution to some human problem that would make us millionaires, or even billionaires, all while having a cup a coffee or chillaxing a jacuzzi!<\/p>
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Matt Ridley’s book How Innovation Works and Why It Flourishes in Freedom<\/em> dispels many myths about innovation. I think it will be a very useful read for managers of large corporations, startup owners, scientists, creative inventors, and even politicians and lawmakers. Yes, indeed! Oddly enough, it turns out that the politics of states and international organizations, as well as the regulatory framework, can significantly influence the development or inhibition of innovation.<\/p> I could quickly list the main premises of Matt Ridley’s book on innovation in this review and save you from reading the nearly 400-page book. However, it would be hard for you to understand the author’s views without specific examples. That is the main advantage of this fascinating read.<\/p> Ridley analyzes the histories of different innovative ways to solve humanity’s challenges from prehistory, through the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, to the 21st century. The analysis covers various aspects of life, including transport, food, energy harvesting, medicine, communication and computer science. His precise recount of the history of innovations, enhancements and developments of different inventions helps understand that it’s a lengthy process full of hard work, experiments, failures, many obstacles and struggle, rather than a sudden flash of genius.<\/p> The author repeatedly emphasizes that inventiveness isn’t always the same as implementing innovations. Sometimes, the person who discovered a phenomenon doesn’t recognize its practical application. Even if a scientific discovery is made thanks to a fortunate coincidence, a lot of practical work is needed to transform it into a useful innovation. Often the determination of entrepreneurs who conducted further experiments, sought improvements and ways to reduce costs made it possible for the innovation to reach households. This was the case with Haber (scientist) and Bosch (entrepreneur).<\/p> Sometimes, it’s not even necessary to invent anything or make a groundbreaking discovery. Innovation can be about adopting and implementing something that’s long been in use elsewhere. This was the case with the adoption of the number 0 in Europe from the Arabs, who had taken it from the Indians. Similarly, the idea of vaccination against smallpox was observed in women in Ottoman society.<\/p> Corporate managers interested in fostering innovation in their company can look at the matter differently. First, they can consider whether to allow employees to conduct more experiments, as it’s impossible to find the optimal solution to a problem without a significant number of failures and mistakes. Another option that \u2014 according to the author \u2014 reduces the company’s risk is to establish a separate entity focused solely on innovations, which is a strategy that corporations have followed since the 20th century. Moreover, it’s worth to review policies and procedures. If assessing the value of a new technology takes 7-9 months, as it once did at Nokia, then the company might be blocking its own development and could end up like the once giant in the mobile phone market. Or take Kodak, which collapsed due to the rise of digital photography, after ignoring the idea of its own employee who first proposed a model of a digital camera in which the image could be recorded on tape and displayed on a TV. Unfortunately, the company’s decision-makers concluded that this technology was unnecessary and poor quality.<\/p> With this book, any startup leader who’s come up with a brilliant idea will learn that the journey from idea to invention is long and it requires hard work. From invention to useful innovation, there’s an even longer process that can be filled with obstacles such as legal disputes over intellectual property, lobbying by those who want to keep the status quo, and legal regulations in the region where it’s located.<\/p> Politicians and lawyers may notice that laws raising implementation costs and requiring expensive compliance departments often stifle innovation and discourage many promising companies. The author often blames the European Union for being conservative and supporting the giants lobbying to maintain the status quo. As a result, countries in the Americas and Asia are easily outpacing Europe. In turn, scientists may realize that not all scientific discoveries are preceded by innovations. Sometimes science serves to explain and improve an existing technological innovation.<\/p> A particularly interesting observation for me was the value of sharing knowledge, so that many people could simultaneously improve a solution and achieve something even better through collaborative or competitive work. In the past, many innovations were developed through trade exchange and diversity of societies. Matt Ridley points out that innovation tends to decrease in large corporations or closed states. That’s why Europe was able to outpace China centuries ago, and now the opposite is happening.<\/p> The desire to keep everything secret and the fight over patents slow down innovations, as often it’s only after a patent expires that improvements can be made without excessive costs. However, inventors and discoverers should remember that human creativity is infinite and at the same time, several or even many people might be working on solving the same problem. At least 21 people came up with the idea of the light bulb at the same time. Alexander Graham Bell arrived at the patent office to file a patent application for the invention of the telephone just two hours before Elisha Grey.<\/p> I’d like to quote one of the many golden thoughts I came across while reading:<\/p> “Innovation is one of those things that everybody favors in general, and everybody finds a reason to be against in particular cases. Far from being welcomed and encouraged, innovators have to struggle against the vested interests of incumbents, the cautious conservatism of human psychology, the profitability of protest, and the barriers to entry erected by patents, regulations, standards, and licenses.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote> The author, who believes that prosperity comes from innovation, and innovation from the freedom to experiment based on sensible regulations, encourages us to take a close look at the reality around us. Perhaps after reading this book, decision-makers of private companies and government organizations will find an area where they can promote innovation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The author of the latest book “How Innovation Works and Why It Flourishes in Freedom” attempts to answer not just the question posed in the title, but also discusses how people fear modern technologies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":486,"featured_media":14015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[799],"tags":[],"popular":[],"difficulty-level":[36],"ppma_author":[928],"class_list":["post-14037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-lifestyle-2","difficulty-level-easy"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":928,"user_id":486,"is_guest":0,"slug":"anna-gregorczyk","display_name":"Anna Gregorczyk","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1669759218260.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1669759218260.jpg"},"first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":"Przez ponad 20 lat zajmowa\u0142a si\u0119 informatyk\u0105 i komunikacj\u0105 w najwi\u0119kszych globalnych korporacjach oraz hobbystycznie copywritingiem i CV writingiem. Autorka poradnika p.t. \"Praca dla Absolwenta\", 22 opowiada\u0144 dla dzieci w magazynie \"Promyczek Dobra\", bajki s\u0142uchowiska w Audiotece p.t. \"Zagubiona w Lesie\" oraz setek artyku\u0142\u00f3w. Obecnie prowadzi JDG i pracuje nad kolejn\u0105 ksi\u0105\u017ck\u0105. "}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/486"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14038,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14037\/revisions\/14038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14037"},{"taxonomy":"popular","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/popular?post=14037"},{"taxonomy":"difficulty-level","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/difficulty-level?post=14037"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Inventions or discoveries aren’t innovation<\/strong><\/h4>
Added value for business owners and managers<\/strong><\/h4>
A pretext for politicians and lawyers to reflect<\/strong><\/h4>
A few thoughts for scientists<\/strong><\/h4>
Openness fosters innovation<\/strong><\/h4>
Ridley’s golden rule<\/strong><\/h4>