I immensely enjoyed @mattwridley's new book How Innovation Works. Also listen to his great conversation w/ @naval on it. However, I disagree w/ Ridley and Naval's pushback against the Great Inventor theory. Some things to consider in favor of the great inventor theory. (thread)

Ridely use the phenomena of simultaneous independent invention to suggest most inventions were destined to be discovered no matter what. To be sure, there are some good examples like Elisha Grey losing to Alexander Graham Bell in the race for a telephone patent by mere minutes.

But there are some huge counterexamples. The germ theory of disease: van Leeuwenhoek investigated bacteria in 1650s with his innovative microscope....but then that research was left alone until 1865. Why didn't anyone make the connection in the two hundred years between?

All the ingredients for the discovery of the germ theory were there -- it was wholly within "the adjacent possible."

Another famous example -- the discovery of the calculus by Newton and Leibniz. While Newton deserves his place, it should be noted that his version and notation for calculus were clunky and confusing. It is Leibniz's version that we use today. So there are discrepancies even here

And finally, if inevitability were true, we would see not just two people coming up with the same idea at once, but three and four, and even five all racing at the same time. But that's not true historically either.

Most examples are two. If there were strong social-cultural forces pushing for innovation, we'd see more of the triples and quadruples.

Lastly, we can look at the careers of inventors and scientists and think about them like baseball players. We can rank them according to the number of great inventions made in their career.

If the great inventor theory were not true, we would see a random distribution of hits. But that's not what we see at all. The best inventors make 10 great discoveries in their lifetime. The next best make 6 or 5, and then the next maybe 2 or 1. It follows a power law

So geography and time matter, but clearly some inventors are greater than others.