From: jimruttshow8596
The terms “invention” and “innovation” are often used interchangeably, but in the study of technology, a crucial distinction exists [00:04:32].
Defining the Terms
- Invention is described as a “primary new thing” [00:04:43]. An example given is the discovery that moving magnetic fields can generate electricity [00:04:45].
- Innovation refers to the application of such a discovery, specifically when an invention “enters the economy and gets used” [00:05:51]. An example of innovation relating to the magnetic field discovery is the development of electric dynamos for bulk electricity production [00:04:53].
Historical Perspective
This distinction dates back at least a century to economist Joseph Schumpeter [00:05:38]. Schumpeter was fascinated by invention but believed the significant “news” was when an invention moved beyond its discovery and found use within the economy [00:05:44].
Despite its importance, the deep study of technology and theories of technology have historically not been rich academic fields [00:02:41, 00:04:15]. This is partly due to the perception of technology as a “lesser sibling to science” [00:03:27], or simply a lack of deep inquiry into its foundations even within engineering departments [00:03:10, 00:03:13].
Importance in the Economy
Economists traditionally viewed the economy as a system of exchange that, from time to time, created new technologies that could be “slid” into the machine to improve it [00:13:34, 00:14:19, 00:14:24]. However, a “much rounder story” suggests that technologies actually create the economy [00:15:01, 00:15:05].
Older economists like John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx observed that an economy developed around its “means of production” [00:15:29, 00:15:32]. Thus, technologies form the “skeleton of the economy” [00:15:52].
Beyond Individual Inventions: Clusters and Domains
Technological evolution and societal impact | Technology doesn’t just evolve through single inventions; it often advances through clusters or “domains” of technologies [01:15:02, 01:16:22].
[!note|Example] The railroad system, emerging from about 1825 to 1900, was not a single invention but a cluster of technologies, including steel production for rails, railway locomotives, and telegraph signaling systems [01:19:03, 01:19:13, 01:19:21, 01:19:24, 01:19:26]. The innovation was how this cluster transformed transportation, reducing travel time from London to Bristol from two weeks by ox-drawn carriages to three and a half hours by rail [01:19:54, 01:19:56, 01:20:00, 01:20:11, 01:20:38, 01:20:40].
These clusters “sweep across the economy” and define new eras, fundamentally redefining society over decades [01:18:46, 01:18:50, 01:18:51, 01:18:54, 01:18:08, 01:18:11]. The core story of technological evolution and societal impact | innovation is when these groups of technologies emerge and impact industries [01:18:41, 01:18:43]. Industries encounter these new bodies of technology, select what they need, and combine it with their existing functions [01:21:26, 01:21:29, 01:21:32].
For instance, modern computer-based banking arose from the encounter between banks’ accounting knowledge and the new computational devices of the 1970s, like IBM mainframes [01:21:37, 01:21:40, 01:21:50, 01:21:54]. Today, digital technologies (including blockchain, Bitcoin, sensors, big data, and telecommunication systems) offer new possibilities for industries like healthcare, leading to highly interactive, platform-based healthcare systems [01:22:56, 01:23:00, 01:23:04, 01:23:08, 01:23:12, 01:23:16, 01:23:21, 01:23:56, 01:23:58].