The Chief Way in Which Innovation Changes Our Lives

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We've gone from being self sufficient, to where you spend your working day doing things that help other people. And we get more and more specialized in the things we produce in order to become more and more diversified in our consumption. It's innovation that has been at the heart of making that journey towards interdependence possible,. a, or away from self sufficiency. A great line in your book. You can teach a whole class of economics around this line.

What's the difference between invention and innovation? Could it be that innovation--the process of making a breakthrough invention available, affordable, and reliable--is actually the hard part? In this week's EconTalk episode, author Matt Ridley talks about his book How Innovation Works with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Ridley argues that we give too much credit to inventors and not enough to innovators--those who refine and improve an invention to make it valuable to users. Along the way, he emphasizes the power of trial and error and the importance of permissionless innovation.