The Innovation Delusion
How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most
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Narrated by:
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Rob Shapiro
About this listen
"Innovation" is the hottest buzzword in business. But what if our obsession with finding the next big thing has distracted us from the work that matters most?
“The most important book I’ve read in a long time.... It explains so much about what is wrong with our technology, our economy, and the world, and gives a simple recipe for how to fix it: Focus on understanding what it takes for your products and services to last.” (Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media)
It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on the state of American work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell argue that our way of thinking about and pursuing innovation has made us poorer, less safe, and — ironically — less innovative. Drawing on years of original research and reporting, The Innovation Delusion shows how the ideology of change for its own sake has proved a disaster.
Corporations have spent millions hiring chief innovation officers while their core businesses tank. Computer science programs have drilled their students on programming and design, even though the overwhelming majority of jobs are in IT and maintenance. In countless cities, suburban sprawl has left local governments with loads of deferred repairs that they can’t afford to fix. And sometimes innovation even kills — like in 2018 when a Miami bridge hailed for its innovative design collapsed onto a highway and killed six people.
In this provocative, deeply researched book, Vinsel and Russell tell the story of how we devalued the work that underpins modern life — and, in doing so, wrecked our economy and public infrastructure while lining the pockets of consultants who combine the ego of Silicon Valley with the worst of Wall Street’s greed.
The authors offer a compelling plan for how we can shift our focus away from the pursuit of growth at all costs, and back toward neglected activities like maintenance, care, and upkeep. For anyone concerned by the crumbling state of our roads and bridges or the direction our economy is headed, The Innovation Delusion is a deeply necessary reevaluation of a trend we can still disrupt.
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Critic reviews
“Vibrant, sure-footed... The authors guide readers with clear and contemporary examples of when deferred maintenance led to either slow or fast disaster.... The authors also thoroughly expose the unjust hierarchy that leaves maintenance workers at the bottom of the pay scale.... A refreshing, cogently argued book that will hopefully make the rounds at Facebook, Google, Apple et al.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
“[A] resounding call for sane business growth. The Silicon Valley ethos of ‘failing faster’ can work for website and app developers, for whom profit margins are high and the costs of failure are low - but it’s terrible advice for people building tangible items.... Vinsel and Russell profile businesspeople, including Andrea Goulet, CEO of the ‘software mending’ firm Corgibytes, and Yury Izrailevsky and Ariel Tseitlin, formerly Netflix’s directors of, respectively, cloud solutions and systems architecture, whom they celebrate for being concerned with upkeep rather than invention.... Readers will come away from Vinsel and Russell’s urgent and illuminating primer with a new perspective on the importance of maintenance as well as innovation in business.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“There’s nothing quite like a pandemic to reveal how much a society relies on maintainers. The Innovation Delusion offers a vital wake-up call. Stirring, sobering, and brilliantly composed, this book is a must-read for everyone who longs for a radical reinvestment in what matters most.” (Ruha Benjamin, professor at Princeton University and author of Race After Technology)
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- By: Enrico Moretti
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs with workers who are among the most productive, creative, and best-paid on the planet. At the other extreme are former manufacturing capitals that are rapidly losing jobs and residents. The rest of America could go either way. For the past 30 years, the three Americas have been growing apart at an accelerating rate. This divergence is one the most important developments in the history of the US and is reshaping the very fabric of our society. But the winners and losers aren't necessarily who you'd expect.
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Almost Stopped Listening
- By R. Hartley on 03-29-19
By: Enrico Moretti
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The Impulse Society
- America in the Age of Instant Gratification
- By: Paul Roberts
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Robert digs down to the economic roots of the problem, shows how it has metastisized to affect every facet of our lives and our ability to navigate the future. In clear, cogent prose that mixes illuminating analysis and vibrant reporting, Roberts not only tells the fascinating story of how the impulse society came to be, but shows how, perhaps, a healthier society may still be possible.
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A Must-Listen for Millenials
- By Doug - Audible on 03-31-15
By: Paul Roberts
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Ghost Work
- How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass
- By: Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Hidden beneath the surface of the internet, a new, stark reality is looming - one that cuts to the very heart of our endless debates about the impact of AI. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this "ghost economy".
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Interesting research, disappointing analysis
- By Rafael Rosa on 05-11-19
By: Mary L. Gray, and others
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What to Do When Machines Do Everything
- How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data
- By: Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig, Ben Pring
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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What to Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on artificial intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans, it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete.
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Assumes that machine learning will grow very slow
- By Nathan Burnham on 05-06-17
By: Malcolm Frank, and others
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The Complacent Class
- The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist, and best-selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition - we're working harder than ever to avoid change.
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MUST READ
- By RJW on 05-06-17
By: Tyler Cowen
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Abundance
- The Future Is Better Than You Think
- By: Steven Kotler, Peter H. Diamandis
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years.
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Perhaps multiply his time estimates by 10
- By Rick on 11-06-21
By: Steven Kotler, and others
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Getting Green Done
- Hard Truths From the Frontlines of Sustainability Revolution
- By: Auden Schendler
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Soccer moms drive Priuses. Sport utility vehicles are going hybrid. Families are using hemp shopping bags. More and more companies are developing "green" buildings. What's more, the business consultants say going green is easy and profitable. In reality, though, many green-leaning businesses, families, and governments are still fiddling with the small stuff while the planet burns. Why?
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Green's Dirty Little Secrets
- By Martin on 07-10-09
By: Auden Schendler
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Average is Over
- Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The widening gap between rich and poor means dealing with one big, uncomfortable truth: If you're not at the top, you're at the bottom. The global labor market is changing radically thanks to growth at the high end and the low. About three quarters of the jobs created in the United States since the great recession pay only a bit more than minimum wage. Still, the United States has more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever, and we continue to mint them.
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Disappointing analysis of future
- By JKBart on 12-10-13
By: Tyler Cowen
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The Zero Marginal Cost Society
- The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
- By: Jeremy Rifkin
- Narrated by: David Cochran Heath
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In this provocative new book, Rifkin argues that the coming together of the Communication Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things—is boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them essentially free.
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Not a convincing argument-just stories & ideology
- By Pierre Parent on 07-26-17
By: Jeremy Rifkin
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Glimmer
- How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World
- By: Warren Berger
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to reveal how thinking like a designer can help solve the greatest challenges we face in business, society, and our daily lives. What can we learn from the ways great designers think-and how can it improve our world? In this highly original book by journalist Warren Berger, in collaboration with celebrated designer Bruce Mau, ten groundbreaking principles of design are shown in action-addressing business, social, and personal challenges and improving the way we think, work, and live.
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not for those who know about design thinking...
- By Pierre on 09-06-10
By: Warren Berger
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Startup Rising
- The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East
- By: Christopher M. Schroeder
- Narrated by: Christopher M. Schroeder
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the world's elation at the Arab Spring, shockingly little has changed politically in the Middle East; even frontliners Egypt and Tunisia continue to suffer repression, fixed elections, and bombings, while Syria descends into civil war. But in the midst of it all, a quieter revolution has begun to emerge, one that might ultimately do more to change the face of the region: Entrepreneurship.
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Inspiring stories
- By Raafat Zaini on 02-13-15
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The Third Industrial Revolution
- How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
- By: Jeremy Rifkin
- Narrated by: Kevin Foley
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Jeremy Rifkin presents an insider's account of the next great economic era: the Third Industrial Revolution, when a new ethic of sustainability will revolutionize the world we live in.
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Lamenting "The Third Industrial Revolution"
- By Joshua Kim on 05-01-12
By: Jeremy Rifkin
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System Error
- Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
- By: Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami, Jeremy M. Weinstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. System Error exposes the root of our current predicament - how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get- and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.
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Excellent on tech. Weak on political speech.
- By Kindle Customer on 11-05-21
By: Rob Reich, and others
What listeners say about The Innovation Delusion
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Daphne Ho
- 09-09-20
A great book and different take to innovation
Lee and Andrew are fantastic storytellers who detail out the cultural shift that has happened over the past few years in Silicon Valley and what WE can do to create a better path forward
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- thirdspace
- 05-17-23
Absolutely remarkable. A must read!
I flew through this book in a few days and was captivated the entire time. It covers a wide range of examples and topics but two key takeaways resonate with me now that I’ve finished the book: 1) a maintenance mindset is the key for a healthy personal life and living in a healthy community — we must maintain our lives and our spaces to thrive! 2) innovation is a key example of focusing on the wrong thing when it actually only serves as a bandaid for deeper, systemic issues. By focusing on the flashy and disruptive approach, we continue to value the wrong things, typically putting the most disadvantaged in further jeopardy. You must read this book!
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- James S.
- 01-24-21
Good ideas, but one-sided and lacking insights
Good ideas with good support, mostly about maintenance of civil and social infrastructure, but lacking necessary counterarguments to make it useful in a real discussion. The focus of this audible is too narrow and one-sided to be of much interest. Too academic, but yet not rigorously academic enough. Too much opinion-based fluff.
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3 people found this helpful