Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results

11.2. Social Innovation Is the Truest Innovation

Social innovation—or what I like to call innovation squared—makes all first-order innovation and human productivity possible in the first place. The invention of constitutional government, private property as a social mechanism, money, public stock ownership, the corporation, the free-market economy, public education—all of these social innovations—are ultimately more significant than the invention of the personal computer, the telephone, the automobile, the jet airplane, or the Internet. The greatest of all inventions is human organization and society—the ultimate tool for achieving human objectives. Boeing jets, 3M Post-it notes, Federal Express, universal telephone service, the Sony Walkman, ...