
What happened to innovation? - jordn
http://blog.samaltman.com/what-happened-to-innovation-1
======
rayiner
I found this quote interesting: "There are a decent number of people working
on more efficient jet engines, but not very many civilians working on
replacing the jet engine with something new."

It's not really the problem that there aren't very many people working on
replacing jet engines. The issue is that the problem domain is full of
physical limits. Ask yourself: why are we still using quicksort now, half a
century after it was developed? Well, because theory tells us that any sorting
algorithm based on binary comparisons is going to require at least O(n log(n))
such comparisons, and that is going to remain the case no matter how much
engineering effort you throw at the problem. All you can really do when it
comes to sorting algorithms is improve on the constant factors and take
advantage of special cases (radix sort for small integer items, etc).

Software engineers don't usually have to think in terms of theoretical limits.
But when I was in engineering school, as an aerospace major, every course
began with: these are the theoretical limits in this particular area--all you
can do is approach them more closely. A Brayton cycle has a certain efficiency
at a given pressure ratio and an airfoil has a certain maximum lift-curve
slope and there is nothing you can do about it. Improvements are in "hard
engineering"\--new materials that can withstand higher temperatures and
pressures to eke out slightly more efficiency, etc. You're already seeing this
in semiconductor manufacturing. As you run into the limits of lithography with
ever-smaller wavelengths of light, semiconductor fabrication plants get
exponentially more expensive to build.

These physical limits are what give the traditional engineering fields the
shape of their "innovation curve." Much more happened in aerospace engineering
from 1930 to 1960 than has (and will) happen from 1960 to 2020. The long-
hanging fruit is gone, and all that's left is hard engineering.

And of course, this all plays into the "get rich quick" issue the author
brings up. If you had a billion dollars lying around, where would you invest
that money? A jet engine that's 0.5% more efficient? If you had $100 billion,
would you spend it making an alternative to jet engines entirely (in an
industry where people will fly on truly shitty airlines just to save $5 on a
ticket)?

~~~
DaniFong
It's not widely known or understood, but there are, in my opinion, quite a few
ways to make significantly superior jet engine replacements.

Factors of 2 or 3 in specific power and efficiency are possible. Due to the
rocket equation, this could yield vastly longer range and more efficient
aircraft (1/10 the weight, 10x the range, 10x the efficiency, 2x the
speed...).

In particular, you point out the limitations of the Brayton cycle and material
limitations. However, there are other cycles that are much closer to Carnot
efficiency, or match it in the ideal case. There's a lot you can do when
isothermal compression is possible. Additionally, if there is a thermal
limitation, you can do isothermal combustion, such that much more heat
addition is at the maximum temperature of your materials, and you can even
design efficient reheating.

It's not a jet -- you want to pair this with a driven fan system or at least
have high bypass, but it's fundamentally more thermodynamically efficient.

For supersonic applications, scramjets remain possible, but challenging. And
rocketry + high altitude flight remains extremely exciting and potentially
more efficient than standard jetliner transport. Just difficult.

So yes, there are physical limitations. But they are not what most people
think they are, and they do not mean what people think they mean.

~~~
rayiner
I didn't mean to imply that, say, the Brayton cycle was an absolute physical
limit to aerospace vehicle performance that cannot be worked around. Of
course, you can switch from jet engines to scramjets, you can switch from
optical lithography to x-ray lithography, you can avoid the realities of
supersonic drag by going into space, etc.

But: a) all that is risky and extremely expensive (and as the semiconductor
example shows us, often exponentially so); and b) whatever technology you use,
you will always be pushing up against physical limits--that's just the nature
of the physical engineering disciplines.

These are novel concepts in a world where we see "technological progress" as
the evolution of the internet from AOL in 1995 to Facebook in 2010 and wonder
why other areas don't improve so fast.

PS) I'd be quite interested to see any specific papers you had in mind vis-a-
vis alternative cycles for jet engines.

~~~
DaniFong
In time I'll publish a paper and technical report. In a little more, I'll show
a prototype. But I do have my hands fairly full!

I don't usually work from the literature (it is hard to access papers outside
of academia, and they're usually weird, abstract, hard to read, and miss the
point anyway) so I work from the first principles.

But at a high level, imagine either an Ericsson or Carnot cycle, (dependent on
materials), where high temp, high pressure heat addition is contiguous
combustion during expansion, and the isothermal compression is a secret sauce
:-)

~~~
rayiner
> I don't usually work from the literature (it is hard to access papers
> outside of academia, and they're usually weird, abstract, hard to read, and
> miss the point anyway) so I work from the first principles.

Amazing.

~~~
noir_lord
Amazing will be 30 years from now when I'm watching a plane fly over using a
Fong-type engine ;).

------
a_p
> We were once great at innovating in the physical world...But recently,
> software (and mostly Internet software) has been the focus of innovation,
> and its importance is probably still underestimated—there are compounding
> effects to how it’s changing the world that we’re only now beginning to
> see...But innovation in the physical world (besides phones and computers)
> over the same time period has been less impressive.

Actually, I would argue that the _opposite_ is true. Software hasn't really
had any important innovations (using David Wheeler's definition, which is from
a CS/EE perspective, and which is linked to every couple of months on HN[1]).
The software required to run a smartphone isn't significantly different than
the software needed to run a similar application on a desktop. On the other
hand, the hardware on a smartphone now and a desktop from the 90s is
different. We take hardware advances like reliable capacitive touchscreens and
maybe this storage advance linked to on HN today [2], and Moore's "Law" for
granted, but "putting more transistors in a circuit" and increased hardware
capabilities were the bottleneck to producing today's technology, not new
software techniques.

The reason that people associate software with innovation is because it has
become the latest tech buzzword. When a word is overused in this manner, it is
hard to have a conversation about it because the definition has been degraded
to include pretty much anything. The granting of patents to trivial software
ideas gives companies a claim to innovation that they do not deserve.

Rayiner's comment on this thread:

> The long-hanging fruit is gone, and all that's left is hard engineering.

will soon be true for computer hardware, and eventually "Moore's Law" will be
broken. When software does not become significantly faster each release cycle,
it will be more apparent that hardware is responsible for today's advances as
opposed to software.

[1]
[http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5911347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5911347)

~~~
sliverstorm
_When a word is overused in this manner, it is hard to have a conversation
about it because the definition has been degraded to include pretty much
anything._

When you can picture someone using the word against itself, I'd say that's
when the bell tolls.

E.g., "Our greatest innovation for this product has been not worrying about
innovation, and focusing on incremental improvement"

------
jimbokun
"It’s harder to raise money for software companies working on uncertain, long-
term, high-reward projects (like AI)."

That's because "AI" doesn't exist.

Are there people working on computer vision? Yes.

Are there people working on speech recognition? Yes.

Are there people working on robotics? Yes.

Are there people working on computers that answer questions? Yes.

Plus far too many applications of "data mining", "big data", "machine
learning" to mention here.

Lots of people making lots of money on all of these things (or at least
starting companies to try). But I guess none of those things are "AI".

~~~
seiji
To abuse an old quote, "AI" doesn't exist in the same way a 747 isn't a giant
mechanical eagle.

All the "AI" tasks above are hyper-localizing things that interact with the
world, but they aren't entirely integratable into something coherent.
(Something we now have to call AGI because the fad establishment has cooped
the term AI for lesser purposes.)

I find it slightly intriguing that a gatekeeper into the World of Funding™ is
directly observing a disconnect between quick burn fads and long term
usefulness. Will there be new offshoot Long Game funds? Software-based long-
term problems these days don't take gargantuan funding, but people need enough
to quit their job and live off of while working towards the future. These Long
Game problems are especially pernicious because sometimes your first payoff
isn't for years down the line. In today's Fundapalooza Party Round Frat Bro
Extravaganza® land, you need users, customers, and sales within the first two
weeks or you're dead in the water.

I'd rather see a pie in the sky fund where, if you can convince the gate
keepers you have a chance at changing the world in the next 3-7 years, your
team gets $500k per person up front to pursue your goals. That may sound like
a lot for up-front nothingness, but we're living in an age of cash hoarding
immortal corporations. Apple could create a $20 billion fund, get 40,000
people working on change-the-fucking-world problems, and not even feel the
loss of cash under their kilometer-sized tempurpedic mattress.

Are we better than buskers? Do we have to be starving artists until we make it
big or should we be taken care of and coddled while we work in minimalism? The
only problem stopping Them[1] from funding every person with a plausible but
at-first-glance crazy idea[2] is the problem of selecting the right people,
not lack of funding in the world.

The only way to make those goals happen yourself these days is to first do a
fast-fad application, sell it, then use that as your base of funding. That has
a long and uncertain cycle time though and you can end up overcapitalized and
distracted (let's all buy teslas and $1000 jeans and $20,000 road bikes!)
unless you pull a Musker[3].

Let's give crazy a chance.

[1]: You know, Them. Them people with money.

[2]: Free energy need not apply.

[3]: Pulling a Musker is very different from starting out with nothing though.
You've got tons of connected, capable, and rich people in-the-know connections
by then, so "losing it all" isn't as special as it seems.

~~~
cousin_it
You know, that might be a cool idea for an investment company. Fund only ideas
that might overturn the world, no future Facebooks need apply. Have a bunch of
scientists examine the ideas to filter out the free-energy types and other
crazies, though the filter should not be too conservative. Maybe also set up
some cash prizes for "craziest plausible idea", prizes are known to create way
more motivation than they cost.

~~~
tmarthal
There is a Thiel Foundation fund for scientific ideas that can't get
traditional academic funding:
[http://www.breakoutlabs.org/home.html](http://www.breakoutlabs.org/home.html)

------
physcab
I did my undergraduate in Engineering Physics then went on to do a PhD in
Materials Science. After a couple years of graduate coursework and research
and passing exams, it was time to pick a dissertation topic. We then had to
defend it before our committee and get their approval.

Well, I failed my first attempt (you were allowed 2). The reason the committee
gave me for not passing was that my topic of choice was not a "significant
improvement of basic science". This perplexed me. My committee was made up of
members who were all 60+ years in age and had been the founding fathers of
metallurgy. Collectively, they invented a _completely new field_ called opto-
electronics. When they gave me that response, I thought to myself, how the
fuck do they expect me to improve basic science?!

It turns out the solution was much more nuanced. In the months that followed,
my advisor would have thought experiments with me. He essentially helped me
brainstorm problems that needed solving, but he always started our sessions
with the question, "what is something that you always wanted to exist, but
doesn't? What are you most curious about?" He then gave me the keys to his
shop and told me to "tinker around". Take apart his vacuum tubes. Screw around
with his argon laser and sputtering machine.

Innovation in the physical world comes from the same curious people that are
inventing fun software programs. But we absolutely need to cultivate it,
because that is what is dying. Put a workbench in every home, make it easier
for people to take apart things they buy, encourage people to be creative
without fear of punishment.

~~~
sumzup
What did you end up going with?

~~~
noir_lord
Death Ray.

Fundamental Science THIS!.

------
embolism
An often overlooked point is that "Getting rich quick" is often portrayed as a
crass and shallow pursuit, whereas in reality in the US, it translates into:

1\. Good healthcare. 2\. Freedom to live in a peaceful safe neighborhood where
you can have a family. 3\. A reasonable education for one's children. 4\.
Ability to choose what projects to work on.

Why is anyone surprised that these are the priorities of entrepreneurs, when
they correlate directly with basic human needs - safety, shelter ability to
reproduce and freedom of choice. Few people will focus on the self-
actualization of a truly world changing project until they have obtained some
security for themselves and their families.

Jobs, Musk, Gates, Thiel, Google.org etc. are all good examples of this. (I.e.
they got rich first, then they launched ambitious projects)

~~~
oscargrouch
All of those you have cited, were innovators before they were rich.. when they
lack the comfort you quoted..

on the contrary, maybe when they need those things for themselves or others,
then they created their inovations through hard work??!

~~~
embolism
They were innovators, but the products that made them rich were a lot simpler
and more focused on short term profit than the more ambitious projects that
they are now famed for.

The point is that they made their money with short term projects of limited
scope, and _then_ embarked on the more ambitious ones.

(Gates came from a rich family though)

~~~
oscargrouch
I dont know Elon Musk biography very much, but Gates, Jobs and Page/Brin
are/were very hard workers.. (Gates sleeping under his desk or in office couch
are well known)

Of course there are "fast bucks" stories like, instagram, tumblr and the
likes.. but i thinks this is more of a bubble effect.. too much money around..
overvaluations, etc.. but (i think) that these stories are the exceptions, not
the rule

~~~
embolism
You are completely missing the point. None of this is about hard work. They
all worked extremely hard for their whole careers, and the ones who are still
alive continue to do so.

The point is that they all established a tidy fortune by focussing on short
term projects _before_ they took on more ambitious projects.

That's why most entrepreneurs aren't focused on major world changing projects
- they are trying to satisfy their needs for security first, and that is the
general rule, not the exception.

------
TylerE
I actually think this is a much longer term thing, and Wall Street is to
blame. Back in what most would consider the heyday of American innovation
(Say, roughly 19th century thru the late 1950s), most large corporations were
private. Leaders with vision could undertake long term plans and actually pull
them off, without the obsession over quarterly earnings.

Would we ever have a company like Boeing or Douglas Aircraft or Bell Telephone
(Who financed Bell Labs for years) or Xerox today, with the pressure to go
public and cash in, rather than building a long-term viable business?

One of the few counter-examples would be Apple under Steve Jobs, but such
cases are few and far between.

------
j_rogers
Regarding super-sonic flight in particular. IIRC, the main reason for Concorde
service being discontinued was the lack of people willing to pay for it.
Further, when door-to-door times are extended by excessive security and
waiting at the airport it doesn't really matter if you've cut your in-air time
in half.

I'd be really excited if someone airline offered pilotless aircraft. I think
this is technically feasible now. I know that we are currently capable of
landing planes autonomously currently. Plus this would reduce door-to-door
time as well since you'd reduce the need for long security lines. After all,
if there's no cockpit to hijack what is the use of screening for potential
hijackers?

~~~
TylerE
It's a lot more complex then that. Arguably, the single root cause of Concorde
being retired was the Flight 4590 crash in 2000, which hurt passenger numbers
quite a bit.

Operations were further hamstrung by the very small fleet size. There are
certain things that just have to be done to get an aircraft commercially
viable (spare parts inventory for instance), and when you have a fleet of only
20, that will cost much more per aircraft than supporting something super-
common like a 737.

It's also worth noting that Richard Brason, at least, thought Concorde was
still viable, and made offers for the BA Fleet as high as £5m/aircraft, but
was refused, at least partially because Airbus was unwilling to offer
continued support.

------
thomasjames
I think the fact that we are talking about "innovation" so much is a sign of
an excessive degree of self-awareness. People used to be at peace with having
a specific interest and true expertise and were not thinking "okay, I'm smart
so let me 'disrupt' a market and shake things up." Many were okay with simply
being a useful, necessary and perhaps not-so-widely celebrated part of a
larger whole. Larger wholes like NASA, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, McDonnell
Douglas, IBM, Bell, Digital Equipment and others that gave rise to this much
lauded period of innovation (the mechanics of which the author doesn't
entirely seem to understand). It also goes without saying that the larger
players in academia were expanding in to engineering in a much more serious
way due to Cold War competition.

Sure, there were exceptions to the theory of leviathan organizations of
specialists. Intel is an exception, in that it was a start up. But it was a
start up founded by people with the understanding of how a larger research
entity would work (two of the main founders were established engineers at
Fairchild). Talking about this sort of thing in the context of modern start-up
culture, to be honest, is flippant and cheeky. Maybe "idea guys", business
journalists, and a lot of modern hackers in general just need to stop thinking
innovation as some substance you can bottle and beating us over the heads with
said bottle until the word loses all meaning. The innovators who created the
sophistication of the modern transportation and energy infrastructure we now
enjoy, not to mention the fundamentals of computing, were a lot humbler than
the baby boomer titans of technology and probably a lot of us out there, too.

------
jacoblyles
It's weird that a few people are challenging short-term thinking, and they're
all friends with each other (Thiel, Musk).

Also, it's weird how short-term thinking has infected the government. Nobody's
forcing them to meet a quarterly P&L, you'd figure that would give them more
freedom.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Also, it 's weird how short-term thinking has infected the government._

That's what we get for 40 years of culture war. One thing Peter thiel
mentioned when I saw him a year or so ago which made a deep impression on me
was that while he's a libertarian he has no desire to 'drown government in the
bathtub' like ideologues such as Grover Norquist. Rather, he'd like an
approach to governance that was a bit less procedural and a bit more
accountable while still being capable of taking on big projects, citing the
Eisenhower administration and Vannevar Bush (no relation) as his models.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush)

~~~
jhartmann
I feel very similar that the Government has stopped working right but have no
desire for downsizing it. We should in fact increase spending on big projects
and push for the hard things that traditional short term capital doesn't want
to touch. Things like AGI, Space Colonization, things like Sonny White's
Eagleworks, things that could transform our society in short order. I would
love it if the real dreamers like Paul March and James Woodward got sizable
funding for their work on Mass Fluctuations and their work on the origin of
Inertia, Eric Lerner got some money to work on Focus Fusion, Kirk Sorensen
could really build and engineer his Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors on a
large scale and countless more less known scientists and visionaries got to
pursue their ideas full time and with significant funding. A well functioning
Government and visionary investors if they focused on people like that could
really move the ball forward for our society and the world. I think we have
great potential for greatness, if I ever get to be 'king' I'm definitely going
to give money to those who want to really reach for the stars. I wish our
Government thought the same way, hopefully with the right direction and moving
away from the quarter as our yardstick we can get there.

------
squozzer
The author has a romantic notion of technical progress. That's fine, but I'd
argue that today's innovations have as much relevance as yesterday's, even
though they lack the sex appeal.

And as others have pointed out, in a lot of the well-known examples, we've
reached certain limits that make technological progress very expensive.

For example, probably the primary reason we don't have better airplane engines
is because exceeding the speed of sound is a very noisy proposition.

I have an excellent book on the B-70 bomber, which in my opinion is the most
beautiful airplane ever designed. And among the reasons it was not adopted is
that sonic booms over populated areas piss people off. And flying higher makes
the problem (counter-intuitively) worse.

But the main reason the B-70 was shelved was the ICBM.

And that forms my next point. The internet itself has (or should have) made
some reasons for travelling pointless. And it works at a much higher velocity
-- a nearly the speed of light.

So in a way the author seems to pine for a "faster horse" instead of a car.

------
jd
Another reason why / short term & software / is the currently the sweet spot
is because it allows for short feedback cycles. A startup is a company that
searches for a viable business model -- a product-market fit. When you create
web based applications you can gather data, A/B test and do a lot of stuff
that allows you to make _measurable progress_ in the right direction.

When working in hardware or when working on long term software projects like
AI you're in a vacuum. And even smart people are not going to do very well if
they can't see the consequences of the decisions they make.

So long term projects take more people, more resources, are typically much
harder problems and on top of that you won't be able to collect data early on
to adjust course if needed. So the risk-adjusted return on an ambitious long-
term startup is going to be horrendous compared to the low-hanging fruit most
web startups go for. So investors avoid the big and ambitious ideas, and I
can't blame them.

------
dangoldin
Great post. If you liked this I also suggest taking a look at Peter Thiel's
CS183 lectures at Stanford. Blake Masters did a great job taking notes:
[http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup](http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup)

In particular, take a look at the Class 15 one -
[http://blakemasters.com/post/24122680868/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/24122680868/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-15-notes-essay)

------
tarr11
"We haven’t had a really capital-intensive war in a long time, and while
that’s obviously great, I am always astonished when I read about how much real
innovation has involved the military or national security—it’s hard to get
effectively unlimited budgets and focus any other way."

This "fact" bothers me. War causes such huge devastation, and yet the focus of
this article is on innovation for its own sake. If you are going to write
about the benefits of war, you should at least mention its cost.

~~~
angersock
Somewhat cynically, one could observe that the costs of war are transient
while the benefits of the spin-off technology are not. The lives saved by the
development of airfoils and communications and medicine far outweigh the piles
of bodies.

Then again, it is interesting to note that the more absolute the war, it
seems, the better the long-term payoff.

~~~
hack_edu
Costs of war: Death.

Costs of spin-off technology: Cash and the Cult of the Founder

~~~
wutbrodo
He didn't say compare the costs of both, he said compare the cost of war with
the benefits of spin-off technology. It's beyond ridiculous to suggest that
the benefits of technology developed during war are best described as "cash".

~~~
hack_edu
Cost =/= Benefit

------
grinich
I think many people often mistake innovation from invention.

 _innovating: (v) Make changes in something established, esp. by introducing
new methods, ideas, or products._

 _inventing: (v) Create or design (something that has not existed before); be
the originator of._

Apple is probably the most innovative company, in that they take existing
technology and continually refine it into product. Which is crucial because
nobody wants their phone to be a lab prototype.

On the other end, most invention happens in academia. You need a lot of
flexibility and low expectations of commercialization in order to really try
dramatically new things.

The magic companies of the last century are the ones who could do both,
allowing people to have side projects that don't immediately show commercial
promise. Bell Labs was a lot like this. So was PARC. And Google to some
degree.

I think a lot of Silicon Valley startups now have the worst of both worlds.
They feel pressure to monetize and sell for millions, so their creativity is
limited and they just barely innovate. They're not content to play, or work on
something just because they like it and find it interesting. We hold up Elon
Musk as a great entrepreneur, but he started building rockets because he
wanted them to exist, not because he wanted to make money. [1]

It takes a different sort of thinking to come up with SpaceX than it does to
build Exec or Instacart. A different level of grit and disregard for fortune.
It's unfortunately rare to find that spirit matched with incredible focus and
ability to execute and sell. And even more unlikely that it gets funded.
(There's a reason Elon started both Tesla and SpaceX with his own cash.)

I'm certainly not saying that one should disregard the economics of running a
company. But you don't make radical changes in the world when your ideas start
from them. [2]

Incidentally, I've actually looked into building ramjet aircraft. (Or
scramjet, because why wouldn't you go supersonic?) It's physically possible,
[3] but requires a breakthrough in energy storage and composites on the order
of the transistor.

I've always thought there are two places in the world with huge market
failures: developing world healthcare, and future-tech. In many ways,
philanthropy such as the Gates Foundation helps mitigate the first, but I've
yet to see anything other than war with a technologically-equal enemy push
forward the second. Google is showing some promise which is exciting, but we
probably shouldn't have all of our future hopes wrapped up in a single giant
online advertising company.

I think we should create a West Coast "Institue for Advanced Study" in the
middle of the desert with a few million dollars and a bunch of dreamers who
want to get their hands dirty and try ideas that everyone else thinks are
crazy. People do amazing things when nobody is looking over their shoulder.

[1] In fact, it seems he had to negotiate like hell to wrap a business model
around that company, and got incredibly lucky that Shuttle was retired. You
could also argue that SpaceX is still innovation but I would argue that the
dramatic cost savings and reusability make it count as invention.

[2] Maybe unless you're a brilliant economist or politician, but how that
world works is a mystery to me.

[3] Check out the WaveRider project.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveRider](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveRider)

~~~
mtraven
> The magic companies of the last century are the ones who could do both,
> allowing people to have side projects that don't immediately show commercial
> promise. Bell Labs was a lot like this. So was PARC. And Google to some
> degree.

Those past companies could afford to create creative playgrounds because they
were monopolies or near monopolies. That is about the only way to create a
situation where "nobody is looking over your shoulder". Google enjoyed that
status for awhile but now seems to be in fierce competition with Facebook and
Apple, so maybe not as much any more.

~~~
grinich
Well, it's really because they had an independent and consistent source of
income. That's a quality of monopolies, but you can get it other ways. For
universities, it's an endowment. For governments, taxes.

I don't really know how much money it takes. The MIT Media Lab was pretty
cheap to get started, relatively. Google makes less profit than Apple, but
they're still able to run Google[x]. Larry+Sergey don't seem to use revenue as
a primary signal for success, so I'm not that worried.

The constraint seems to be people who are bright, determined, imaginative, and
rebellious enough to ditch the status quo.

~~~
zanny
This is why I'm an advocate for basic income. It would let the imaginative
actually try to imagine rather than do grueling soulless work to eat.

~~~
zenbowman
And all the "unimaginative" folks would be the serfs, paying for the
"imaginative".

No thanks.

If you notice the pattern of innovation, its usually not driven by a bunch of
dreamers trying to think of the next big idea. Its driven by people trying to
solve a very specific problem and finding a solution that is more generally
applicable.

The electronic telegraph was created as an electronic method of replacing the
old optical telegraph systems.

The cathode ray tube was discovered in order to observe the waveform
electricity for physicists.

The solid-state transistor was discovered at Bell Labs as a replacement for
the vacuum tube amplifier.

UNIX was created at Bell Labs as a programming environment to create programs
to drive the telephone exchange.

Follow the chain of innovation and this pattern appears over and over. Solve a
specific problem, find a general solution.

~~~
abecedarius
That's quite wrong about Unix. [http://www.cs.bell-
labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html](http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html)

I can't speak as confidently about the rest, but the impression I get is that
people like Gauss were hacking up telegraphs very soon after enough basic
components and knowledge were in place; i.e. the gating factor was not the
need for better communications but the new knowledge out of left field.
Likewise the CRT seems motivated by curiosity more than technological problem-
solving:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray#History)
The Bell Labs transistor seems to fit your model, though I wonder about the
Lilienfield patent 20 years earlier:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_transistor)

"Invention is the mother of necessity" looks like a better fit for most of
these examples.

------
nostromo
The beauty of the internet is that it was this unthinkably big project that
was eventually thrown into the laps of the public. In my view this is
government at its best: building infrastructure that lays the groundwork for
huge wealth creation.

The only opportunity I can think of right now that might be similar in its
capacity to fuel wealth creation as much as the internet has is perhaps a
space elevator. I'm not sure how exactly it would be used, but similarly,
nobody really knew how ARPANET would end up being used either.

I, like millions of engineers, would love to work in "truly innovative"
industries beyond just software. However, innovation needs infrastructure to
build upon. The amount of resources needed to work on the problems that Elon
Musk takes on are prohibitive for the vast majority of entrepreneurs,
investors, and engineers.

~~~
jgamman
use of the word 'infrastructure' is telling. i've been doing a lot of thinking
lately on that topic. really recommend the book Infrastructure: value of
social resources by frischmann.

------
kaa2102
Profit. It's far easier to cut costs, reduce taxes, and expand existing
products/services into new markets than it is to conduct applied research and
commercialize new products.

~~~
bjhoops1
I think it is important to understand the limitations of the profit motive.
Too often it is held up as some sort of panacea, as if all problems are the
result of gov'ment getting in the way of heroic capitalists seeking glorious
profits.

Fact is, unfettered capitalism will innovate to the direct extent and in ways
that it is profitable to do so. Which is why you see very little "innovation"
being done to benefit poorer citizens - why innovate for a market that can't
buy what you're selling? Rather, let's spend millions developing "solutions"
to the problems of those who have so very few of them. A sad irony, that.

This is where a well-run government can improve things - by artificially
creating profit motives in important areas where there was none before. A tax
on short-term investing or day-trading would be a great start to discourage
utterly worthless short-term speculation and HFT, and is a great example of
how unobtrusive policies can create desirable incentives.

------
beat
The real hard part is that so many of us grew up on a: Moore's Law, and b:
science fiction. We want to believe Moore's Law applies to everything, because
it fits the mythos and the observed behavior of the world we grew up in.

Sadly, nothing but computers are subject to Moore's Law. And even there, it'll
run out sooner or later.

------
kungfooey
I'm rather surprised this hasn't already been mentioned, but if you want to
read more on this thread of thought written by an economist, check out the
ebook, "The Great Stagnation" by Tyler Cowen. Alternatively, watch his Tedx
talk.

------
vonskippy
What happened to innovation? At least in the States, it's been sued out of
existence.

------
daemon13
Existing model of financing long-term game-changing next-big-thing companies
via equity dilution with angel/venture financing is less optimal from the
founders' perspective than pursuing another feature start-up.

More risk, less equity, success is uncertain, reward far away in the future -
why bother with making world better?

My 2 cents :-)

P.S.: a better model might be if the founder pursuing next-big-thing commits
to certain ROI for investors (2-3-5 times on capital), thus increasing this
founder's potential upside and motivation to go the hard way. Critique and
suggestions are welcome.

------
oscargrouch
Capitalism tends to monopolies, monopolies tends to sustain its power and its
dominance so innovation is a threat to their dominance and developed markets..
Also when a company or group of people innovate the dominant dinosaur buys it
and shut it down..

On the other side, those companies put large sums of money to "innovate" on
the markets they already dominate, or in research to make them better in what
they already do.. (so it doesnt really get into a innovation cicle)

~~~
jacoblyles
Capitalism tends to monopolies? This is not true at all in the common case.
Have you read "The Innovator's Dilemma"?

Highly regulated industries, industries with network effects, or industries
that require very rare natural resources (diamond mines) are exceptions. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)

~~~
oscargrouch
I did'nt read the "Innovator's Dilemma" , i just follow the history of the XX-
XXI century and the news..

you may have opportunities when the market is new, or when you create the
"market" yourself.. but with time monopolies will take control and no more
inovations allowed.. until of course.. someone innovates aside of the system
and a new cycle begins.. but the old status quo are still there trying to
demolish the new wave that is a threat to its dominance..

i could quote a lot of cases here based on reality.. but anyone can find
several examples of that just thinking a little bit..

~~~
jacoblyles
I'll tell that to the CEO of Sears Roebuck. He probably doesn't read "the
history of the XX-XXI century and the news.."

~~~
oscargrouch
what i meant its to tell that this is crystal clear.. and you can pick a lot
of examples of what im telling about.. eg. when apple opens the mobile market
with iphone.. of course.. there a lot of oportunities..and a lot of big
players start to compete, cause its a blue sea...

But in 10/20 years.. it will have 2 or 3 players at most.. so maybe a new
cycle will happen again.. in other scenarios.. that may or may not will break
this monopoly down to pieces.. but its visible that it all tends to
monopolies.. i was not questioning were innovation was impossible.. or small
players could start a new game.. but a small player cant enter in a old game
and spect to win because the big players will crush him, or in the best of the
scenarios will buy him.. (waze being bought by google to nail the competition
of google maps)..

did'nt meant to be rude, ok?! sorry ;)

------
hooande
Some thoughts on this:

1\. Surprising to see an article on innovation that mentions Kickstarter only
as a footnote. One of the reasons we lack innovation is because we've let one
group of people, big name venture capital investors, to decide by themselves
what's good and what isn't. It's important to note that the modern "VC"
investment model had very little to do with the major innovations of the 20th
century. Some of our greatest inventions came from government laboratories,
people working on their own without organized investment and corporations who
acted like VCs by internally funding good ideas. Modern VCs only appeared
around the 80s to give us derivative works that succeeded by added branding to
existing ideas. The beauty of Kickstarter et al is that we have a much larger
pool of people to tell us what's good or bad, but it does no good if we keep
looking down on crowdfunding as venture capital's weaker sibling. We need to
focus more on "how much good do they do" than on "how much money did they
raise"

2\. Another reason we don't have much innovation is because "Inventor" is no
longer a job title. Back in the days of (my hero) Thomas Edison you didn't
need a VC firm or a trendy office to justify your intentions to make something
new. You just did it, with no particular funding or social organization.
People decided to dedicate their lives to the pursuit of making new and
original things. Now it's so important to be a part of the "startup
community", important to have social validation from big name vcs, important
to never say no to any amount of money. Until people can declare themselves to
be Inventors without all of the other trappings, we shouldn't expect unbounded
innovation from them.

3\. This line struck me "...one guy saying that they were going to do these
crazy things like ship a phone with no keyboard running a real OS and require
everyone to buy a data plan."

Another reason we don't innovate any more is because minor changes to an
existing product now count as the the most significant innovations of our
time. I understand that we need heroes and Steve Jobs is one of them. And a
lot of people like the iphone. But Thomas Edison invented recorded sound.
Tesla harnessed electricity and energy beams. Freaking Ben Franklin invented
the concept of a lending library. And the best our generation has is something
about a phone OS and data plan?

We can't expect the next generation to be true innovators when we direct all
of our hero worship at people who make small improvements to existing ideas.
Yes, this may mean one of your heroes too. But if we can't even make the
sacrifice of focusing on those who actually do invent new things, how can we
be expected to be so creative ourselves?

Finally, innovation isn't completely dead. People are working on fusion
reactors, warp drives and brain interfaces. Their efforts just don't draw as
much attention of big VC investments or the work of big name entrepreneurs.
The biggest things that innovation is lacking are things that our society can
provide.

~~~
pyoung
I wouldn't dismiss the smart phone so easily. Yeah, a lot of people use them
to play games and do other trivial tasks, but the popularity of the iphone
pushed telecom companies to radically upgrade their infrastructure, and while
we are not there yet, hopefully the end result is fast, ubiquitous, and cheap
connections to the internet around the globe. We are already seeing some of
the possibilities, and I can't even begin to imagine what the future will look
like (if I could, I would be feverishly working to make it happen), but
wireless internet is certainly going to be a key component, and we have the
iphone (or more precisely, the popularity of the iphone) to thank for getting
it started.

~~~
jsemrau
Could not agree more. In my mind, the smart phone is on the level of a 1990's
Internet. We haven't even started using all the possibilities that come from
location based services or mobile augmented reality.

------
gwern
Warmed-over Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen.

------
sandhus
Charity begins at home.

------
FD3SA
This post is missing the forest for the trees.

Hard problems are hard. Easy problems are easy. In a world where autonomy can
only be purchased by wealth, any rational actor will spend his/her time
optimizing the acquisition of wealth by solving easy problems as quickly as
possible. This will then allow him/her the necessary autonomy to tackle hard
problems.

This applies to all capital intensive endeavors of creation: science, film,
software, hardware, etc. Even the least capital intensive endeavors such as
pure mathematics require autonomy in the form of a guarantee of food, shelter,
and healthcare to be viable in the long term.

As such, the solution is simple: Increase autonomy. But do we increase
autonomy for everyone, or pick and choose winners?

The first strategy is basic income, and the second strategy is venture
capital. Those involved in venture capital are now seeing the weaknesses in
their own system, wherein picking and choosing winners will skew heavily
towards the best signalers (i.e. marketers), rather than the most
qualified/talented.

If VCs want to hedge their bets, they can put their lobbying money where their
mouths are, and support basic income. This allows savants who are unable to
market themselves the required freedom to work on their ideas with a tiny but
guaranteed degree of autonomy. It is the equivalent of buying a Vangaurd index
fund instead of picking and choosing stocks for a portfolio.

The winning strategy is to do both simultaneously.

~~~
mynegation
I'd really like to know how basic income is supposed to work to boost
creation. In fact we have something that supports people that proved their
basic level of knowledge and creativity. It is called grants. And may be R&D
tax incentives.

But basic income for everyone to me now looks like casting the net that is two
wide. Many people will just stop working and will sit in front of the TV with
pizza.

Is there any research on how different forms of incentives, like tax breaks,
grants, basic income affect (or may affect) the rate of innovation? To me that
sounds like something worth of Nobel prize in economics if successful.

~~~
enra
In Finland, like in many Nordic countries, you kind of have "basic income",
not exactly though since it requires you to jump through some hoops. Basically
if you don't have income, or wealth, the state pays your living expenses and
gives you some income to live on.

However, I have ever met anyone who use this to work on something creative
(I'm sure there are some). Many of them just don't like to work or have a
career, and a way of life that sometimes also transfers to their children.

One exception could be Linus, because created Linux while he was studying,
there for receiving "studying income" from state. But usually smart people
tend to get jobs, start companies, or freelance a bit to live and work on
something.

I think minimal grant system would be better where you should have defined a
focus what you're going to work on. Although problem might be that could be
too short term thing again.

------
angersock
The biggest issue I've got with this is at the beginning many goalposts are
set and our lack of performance is then paraded out without any regard to how
silly they are.

The author bemoans that we haven't done better than the jet engine, but
honestly we're probably as far along the mechanical design of that problem
domain as possible. The fact is, in very many fields, fuck, we've hit them to
death. Concrete is pretty well understood, as is analog electronics. Some
fields are simple innovated-out, and all that's left is making them more
efficient or cheaper or simply more widely deployed.

(This fact, incidentally, is why I ended up doing computer stuff instead of
being a mechanical engineer.)

~~~
sgrove
It's interesting that you mentioned that concrete in particular is well
understood, I just came across an interesting article the other day about some
breakthrough in understanding Roman concrete: [http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-
releases/2013/06/04/roman-con...](http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-
releases/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/)

Seems there are still certainly innovations/iterations left to be made in
concrete.

~~~
angersock
Saw that one too--it's a cool thing. There are still things being done, for
example, in making greener concrete that has better water permeability and
whatnot, but I don't think the author would consideration that the sort of
innovation we need.

------
jholman
Well, sama, I'm glad to hear that you feel this way, and I'm looking forward
to seeing what you do about it.

I mean, I never used Loopt, so maybe I'm missing something but it sure looks
like an example of what you're criticizing (though better than anything I've
done). But that's okay, Zip2 wasn't that huge of a contribution to the world
either. The impressive bit is what Musk did after Zip2.

So good luck! You're in a better position than most, to do more than talk!

