Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil

Invention and Innovation by Vaclav Smil

From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts. Included in BILL GATES's 2023 Holiday Reading List
Included in Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023
Included in The Next Big Idea Club’s February 2023 Must-Read Books

"Every Smil book that I own is marked up with lots of notes that I take while reading. Invention and Innovation is no exception. Even when I disagree with him, I learn a lot from him...he always strengthens my thinking."
—Bill Gates, Gates Notes The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm. Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation, and looks not only at inventions that failed to dominate as promised (such as the airship, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight), but also at those that turned disastrous (leaded gasoline, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons). And finally, most importantly, he offers a “wish list” of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century. Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity—and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.

Smil, Vaclav: - Vaclav Smil is active in interdisciplinary research in the fields of materials, energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy.

He has published 35 books and more than 400 papers on these topics. His research areas span throughout the sciences. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy), and a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2010 he was listed by Foreign Policy among the top 100 global thinkers. He was the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

He has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions, has been an invited speaker in nearly 400 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, and has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia. Lastly, in 2013 he had the distinction having Bill Gates state that There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil in an article that appeared in Wired.com.

SKU	Non disponible
ISBN 13	9780262048057
ISBN 10	0262048051
Titre	Invention and Innovation
Auteur	Vaclav Smil
État	Non disponible
Type de reliure	Hardback
Éditeur	MIT Press Ltd
Année de publication	2023-02-14
Nombre de pages	208
Note de couverture	La photo du livre est présentée à titre d'illustration uniquement. La reliure, la couverture ou l'édition réelle peuvent varier.
Note	Non disponible