Adam Smith said that we seek security–more cautious than enterprising–because we suffer more in falling from a better to a worse situation than we ever enjoy in rising from a worse to better. Yet Smith provided opportunity for James Watt, an upstart 22 year-old mechanical genius that was denied him by the local corporations; thus launching a spectacular career of innovation. Others, from Tom Edison to Steve Jobs, followed. Diamond’s book is about our need to nourish and reduce the obstacles to that creative engine; to give freedom to the flower of innovation that we all be enriched.
Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize in Economics, received in 2002.
Vernon Smith’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.