Over the last few weeks, I have come across writings from very different genres that challenge economic development and education “groupthink.”  I encourage you to peruse the links in this and other upcoming posts because they truly will cause you to think.

In his new book The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur questions our notion of that great buzzword “innovation.”  Says Arthur:

There isn’t a deep understanding of innovation out there.  And I think you can see that because the way innovation is described is very hand-wavy, and-then-something-creative-happens.  All societies want to be innovative, but in the absence of any deep idea of innovation, governments and companies tend to run after what seems to be the latest idea; that if you somehow have, ‘creativity,’ or invest in R&D, or set up industrial parks, that’s going to work.

In his book review, Lee Drutman explains the book’s basic argument this way:

New technology is just combining old technologies in new ways.  And all technology is, at its core, simply the harnessing of nature and its manifold phenomena for human needs.

He goes on to say:

The key implication … is that … innovations do not come out of nowhere.  ”There are not magic wands or bright ideas in bathtubs,” Arthur said….  Rather, innovation is something that comes from the hard work of decades and decades of education and training.  It is something that comes from devoting lots of resources to universities and investing in loads of basic science.

In other words, there is no “magic” shortcut to business innovation, contrary to what you might hear at the next economic development conference you attend.