Enabling Innovation: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Fostering Technological Change

Innovation emerges out of the adaptations that occur as difference agents learn and select improvements. It is not the experts who generate knowledge and technology for others to use: users themselves improve upon promising ideas. Based on a compelling use of examples from agriculture, industry, economy, and IT, the book argues that successful innovation, as a rule, is based on diversity, on opportunity grasping and especially on mobilizing creativity among people who are willing to run with a brilliant idea, even if it is still flawed and underdeveloped. The fact that it is underdeveloped is a boon, so long as the various agents in the system are invited to improve upon it. Examples from this book come from diverse areas, such as wind turbines, LETS, agricultural engineering, and the Linux operating system, show that the way of looking at the world of innovation is applicable in a variety of fields.