Dear Innovator: 7 Best Books for Understanding Innovation from an Evolutionary Perspective — List by Tiisetso Maloma
My two newest books explore innovation from an evolutionary perspective, and, with a view to creating novel products. They are available on Amazon: Innovate The Next and Understanding the 4th Industrial Revolution & Innovation Easily.
The ‘Revolution’ in ‘Industrial Revolutions’ should have been called ‘Evolution’, i.e. it should have been called the First Industrial Evolution (and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th — so on so forth).
I am kidding. This is just to say that humans are ever innovating. The next and following Industrial Revolutions will forever come.
Of course, this stems from biology. It gave us a brain that can invent/innovate products, fuse those products into others: and thus create other novel products. A chair is invented, a wheel is invented later; and, later, the fusion of those two is a wheelchair.
Someone invents a motor engine and it propels a boat. Later, the same technology is incorporated to make a land boat (a car silly).
Banking is created, and later when internet is created, internet banking becomes.
I said the foundation of this is our evolved brain. We’ve got that brain that invents, fuses the innovations, and innovates on many layers, further. Unlike our cousins the chimps, they only invent up to one layer and nothing above (they sharpen sticks to make spears).
Anyway, they like a banana shake, however, they cannot invent a blender.
Innovations mirror our biology — they are a product of the biological mind. Respectively, to work — the innovations — they have to mirror our evolved biological inclinations, or else we won’t use them: I.e. utility.
Utility in innovations is what our biological inclinations views as useful — whether good or bad to us: Examples: a chair (to sit for rest — or whatever), heroine (it’s bad but we use it), porn, candy, cars (we got that inclination to get somewhere — maybe to go see our loved ones), etc.
For such musings, get my books above.
Tinkering and exploring innovations/inventions is ingrained in our biology. We won’t stop.
The fusion of knowledge in these books has helped me better understand various frameworks and models within which innovation evolves better.
Some of them have helped me shape the ideas I have in my two new books.
- — -
** The following list is in no particular order.
1. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (By Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
Besides its central ideas of how to be robust (economically, career, health, etc), it has so many references of stories of innovation.
It is also funny.
2. The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Disrupting Business, Industries, and Our Lives (By Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler)
This book gets you clued up on the latest exponential innovations in the world — the key terms being ‘exponential’ and ‘convergence’, and how you can jump on them and become an innovator.
This book is part of a series called Exponential Technology series: Please read these other books in the series: ‘Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think’ and ‘Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World’.
3. The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking (By Saifedean Ammous)
Here you will realise that the evolution of innovations is linked to money. Money, as well, is an innovation and has an evolutionary trail.
Also in the future, it might be innovated — just like it is innovated further through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
4. Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (By Safi Bahcall)
I consider this one of the best books that details the story of how loonshot ideas happened. It is also a trajectory of how other novel loonshots will happen — I think. What do you think?
The author defines a loonshot as an idea too big-mad to even attempt (going to the moon decades before it happened).
The storytelling in this book is beautiful.
S/O Mr Bahcall!!
5. The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge (By Matt Ridley)
Also, this book will send you to many different places of examples. It’s like a book on the evolution of everything (it is): language, law, technology, morality, etc.
6. Where Good Ideas Come From (By Stephen Johnson)
This is the book where I first heard of the ‘adjacent possible theory’. The theory is central to my 5th, 6th and 7th books: Township Biz Adjacent, Innovate The Next and Understanding the 4th Industrial Revolution & Innovation Easily.
7. Zero to One (By Peter Thiel and Blake Masters)
Peter Thiel is the co-founder of the Pay Pal and one of the first major investors in Facebook.
He’s is considered a contrarian (I would say by the thought-leading [gate-keeping] community — journalists and academics).
- — -
My two newest books explore innovation from an evolutionary perspective, and, with a view to creating novel products. They are available on Amazon: Innovate The Next and Understanding the 4th Industrial Revolution & Innovation Easily.
