The Myths of Innovation

Chapter 10. Innovation is always good

The chief cause of problems is solutions.

— Eric Sevareid ^[168]

In 1903, two crazy young men, without any engineering training or college education, built a machine the world told them couldn’t be made. In the frigid 30-mile-per-hour winds of Kill Devil Hills, a few miles from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers made the first sustained powered flight with a person at the controls (see Figure 10-1). Orville won the coin toss and flew first, but the brothers took turns, making four flights before calling it a day. As amazing as their accomplishment was, it went unnoticed: five boys from the nearby village made up most of the crowd. Only two small newspapers bothered to report on the event because it was seen as a stunt, not a technological breakthrough. It’s hard to believe, but the Wright brothers landed their plane on a not very interested planet. The world would have to wait another 30 years for the commercial aviation industry to begin.

Figure 10-1. An early Wright brothers’ glider on a test run at the famed Kill Devil Hills.

But it wasn’t the lack of interest in the development of powered flight that was the most curious thing: it was how the Wright brothers pitched their idea to potential investors. They didn’t talk about multibillion-dollar ...