"Innovation" is the hottest buzzword in business. But what if our
obsession with finding the next big thing has distracted us from the
work that matters most?
**"The most important book I've read in a long time . . . It explains
so much about what is wrong with our technology, our economy, and the
world, and gives a simple recipe for how to fix it: Focus on
understanding what it takes for your products and services to
last."--Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media
**
It's hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets
marketed as being disruptive, whether it's genuinely a new invention or
just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on thestate of American
work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell argue
that our way of thinking about and pursuing innovation has made us
poorer, less safe, and--ironically--less innovative.
Drawing on years of original research and reporting, The Innovation
Delusion shows how the ideology of change for its own sake has proved a
disaster. Corporations have spent millions hiring chief innovation
officers while their core businesses tank. Computer science programs
have drilled their students on programming and design, even though
theoverwhelming majority of jobs are in IT and maintenance. In countless
cities, suburban sprawl has left local governments with loads of
deferred repairs that they can't afford to fix. And sometimes innovation
even kills--like in 2018 when a Miami bridge hailed for its innovative
design collapsed onto a highway and killed six people.
In this provocative, deeply researched book, Vinsel and Russell tell the
story of how we devalued the work that underpins modern life--and, in
doing so, wrecked our economy and public infrastructure while lining the
pockets of consultants who combine the ego of Silicon Valley with the
worst of Wall Street's greed. The authors offer a compelling plan for
how we can shift our focus away from the pursuit of growth at all costs,
and back toward neglected activities like maintenance, care, and upkeep.
For anyone concerned by the crumbling state of our roads and bridges or
the direction our economy is headed, The Innovation Delusion is a
deeply necessary reevaluation of a trend we can still disrupt.
