Chapter 10. Innovation is always good
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
In 1903, two crazy young men, without any engineering training or college education, built a machine the world told them couldn’t be made. In the frigid 30-mile-per-hour winds of Kill Devil Hills, a few miles from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers made the first sustained powered flight with a person at the controls (see Figure 10-1). Orville won the coin toss and flew first, but the brothers took turns, making four flights before calling it a day. As amazing as their accomplishment was, it went unnoticed: five boys from the nearby village made up most of the crowd. Only two small newspapers bothered to report on the event because it was seen as a stunt, not a technological breakthrough. It’s hard to believe, but the Wright brothers landed their plane on a not very interested planet. The world would have to wait another 30 years for the commercial aviation industry to begin.
But it wasn’t the lack of interest in the development of powered flight that was the most curious thing: it was how the Wright brothers pitched their idea to potential investors. They didn’t talk about multibillion-dollar ...
Get The Myths of Innovation now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.