Matt Ridley on How Innovation Works

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Books, History, Science, Philosophy, Courses, Interviews, Business, Economics, Ethics, Education

4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.0	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast,
0:17.0	and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.0	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done
0:25.0	going back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:33.0	Today is July 13, 2020, and my guest is author Matt Ridley, his latest book in the Subjective Days.
0:40.0	Discussion is how innovation works. This is Matt's fourth appearance on Econ Talk.
0:46.0	He was last year in February 2016 talking about his book, The Evolution of Everything.
0:52.0	I want to remind listeners there's a video of this episode available on YouTube.
0:55.0	You can go there, search econ talk, you can subscribe, you can watch as well as listen.
1:01.0	Matt, welcome back to econ talk.
1:03.0	Russ, it's really nice to be back on econ talk. One of my favorite shows.
1:08.0	Thank you, sir.
1:09.0	This book, your latest, is the rare book that gets better as it goes along.
1:14.0	It's really in almost two books. It's in the first half, it's a catalog of the complexity of innovation,
1:21.0	some of its history and some very important areas.
1:24.0	The second half, which is fascinating, and we'll of course be drawing on that.
1:28.0	The second half are the insights that you come to having done that catalog in the first half.
1:34.0	I learned a great deal from the book. It's very provocative. It's just fantastic.
1:40.0	I want to start with the question, the difference between invention and innovation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.