
Invention and Innovation
A Brief History of Hype and Failure
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Narrated by:
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Tim Fannon
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By:
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Vaclav Smil
From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts.
The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm.
Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation. He then looks at three different types of inventions.
Inventions that failed to dominate as promised:
Airships
Nuclear fission
Supersonic flight
Inventions that turned disastrous:
Leaded gasoline
DDT
Chlorofluorocarbons
Inventions we have long been promised (and that would be highly beneficial):
Travel in vacuum (hyperloop)
Nitrogen-fixing cereals
Nuclear fusion
Finally, he offers a “wish list” of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century.
Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity—and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.
©2023 Vaclav Smil (P)2023 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...




















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Not quite as good as some of his other books
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Good
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He does it again
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Innovation on timeline
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Similar to other books, but a different view
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Don’t give up!
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lmm
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Reality, like it or not
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Not one of his best books, but pretty high up there. Interesting topics with a lot of interesting insights. Good memory refresher of what have been the big words and the similarities between them.
Definitely worth the monwy/credit.
Not the best from Vaclav, but near the top
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Aweful book
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