The IEA Book Club is delighted to host renowned author, Matt Ridley, who will be discussing his latest book “How Innovation Works”. This webinar will be taking place on Tuesday 21st July, and will be chaired by the IEA’s Academic and Research Director, Professor Syed Kamall.

In his latest work, Matt argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It still cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.

Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations – from steam engines to search engines – how they started and why they succeeded or failed.

If you would like to attend this webinar, please sign up here

If you have any questions regarding the webinar, please contact us at bookclub@iea.org.uk or call 020 7799 8906