Scalable Innovation

xxxii Prologue: Unlearning What’s Untrue

in the backyard or rearranging chairs on the deck is neither inventive nor

innovative in any substantive way.

In popular culture, invention and innovation are often lumped together

as an element of a bigger story about the battle between the old and the

new [25]. Figure0.2 illustrates this ten-thousand-foot perspective. The old

is shown in black, the new is shown in white, with invention and innova-

tion seen as small, barely distinct dots within the domain of the new. Such

high-level contrast between the old and the new is useful as a writing device.

It creates a sense of background tension that is esse ...