When he won the Nobel Prize for his work on laser technology, Charles Townes said, “It’s like the beaver told the rabbit as they stared at the Hoover Dam. ‘No, I didn’t build it myself. But it’s based on an idea of mine.’” Cheekiness aside, this remark hints at the escalation of ideas that define innovation.
In his recent book and serial biography, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, author Walter Isaacson takes an entertaining and informative look at how innovation and failure propelled technological advances during what is being called the third industrial revolution.
