Is Innovation in Human Nature? (2016)

The question is equivalent to asking whether the human brain is a vestigial organ, like the wing of an ostrich -- absurd.

The industrial revolution didn't constitute the introduction of innovation to human behavior. All humans in all time periods innovated in order to adapt to novel environments. All human environments since pre-history have been novel environments relative to human genetic instinctual behavior, and even relative to the immediately preceding generation of humans, which was usually smaller in population, less organized, and less developed.

The industrial revolution was made possible by technological and scientific prerequisites accumulated over centuries.

Ob. Betteridge's Law.

When I studied the industrial revolution at university, in a course on international trade, we began with the questions of why it occurred where it did, when it did.

Short answer: a series of strong agricultural decades created a surplus large enough to allow a pool of Labor to mobilise away from agriculture, which hitherto had occupied 98% of the workforce.

It’s not that those 98% of workers weren’t as imaginative and innovative as, for example, the people YCombinator funds today. It’s just that being serfs limited their opportunities for expression.

P.s. Come on man/girl... We're still far away from 1st april :D