innovation

Turning On Light Bulbs, Dialing Back Climate Change, and Building Up Cities

Edison: And the Rise of Innovation by Leonard DeGraaf (Foreword by Bill Gates)

The nutshell: This heavily illustrated biography of Thomas Edison from DeGraaf, the archivist at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey, creates a portrait not of a mad genius but of a brilliant, ambitious, and collaborative inventor and businessman with a knack for knowing what the public wanted.

Literary lovechild of: Randall E. Stross’ The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World and Henry Ford’s My Life and Work.

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Your Project Will Hit a Crisis

But Luckily, If You Stay Calm, You May Also Come Up With Some of Your Best Ideas

by Robert P. Colwell |

For every big project I’ve worked on as an engineer, there came a crisis. It would happen somewhere along the design path, generally about halfway through the schedule, and it …

California’s Successful Dilettantes

The State Leads In Innovation Because It Welcomes Hippies, Eccentrics, and the Aimless

by Alec Foege |

American tinkering, which is the engine of American innovation, traces its roots way back to the Founding Fathers. But contemporary American tinkering owes a lot to the California counterculture, the …

UCLA School of Law’s Kal Raustiala

Duck Fat Ice Cream Tastes Better Than It Sounds

Kal Raustiala is a professor at the UCLA School of Law, director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and coauthor of The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation. …

Patrick Soon-Shiong

This Billionaire Brags On His Jump Shot

Biomedical innovator, businessman, and physician Patrick Soon-Shiong is the richest man in Los Angeles and a Lakers part-owner. Before talking about the coming healthcare revolution, he fielded questions in the …

Go Ahead: Steal This Headline

Kal Raustiala of UCLA Says Imitation Breeds Innovation

Why do Angelenos spend $16 for a ticket to the ArcLight cinema to see a movie they can download for free? Why does the Kogi truck keep making money on …


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