Speaker 1: But knowledge to work and grow your business with c
Speaker 1: i T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i
Speaker 1: T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for
Speaker 1: small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i
Speaker 1: T dot com put Knowledge to Work. Hello and welcome
Speaker 1: to another edition of The Odd LODs podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal,
Speaker 1: Managing editor of Bloomberg Markets, and I'm Tracy Alloway, Executive
Speaker 1: editor of Bloomberg Markets. Hey, Tracy, how's gone pretty good?
Speaker 1: I think get kind of nervous when you ask me
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Oh yeah, I just thought, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a while. I wasn't on last week, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to catch up. That's true. That's true. You
Speaker 1: were away. You missed Matt Levin and Space Robots, So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry a little worried um that he did better
Speaker 1: than me. So I'm kind of I'm trying. I haven't
Speaker 1: listened to it yet because I don't want to see
Speaker 1: if he's better than me, you have to stuff it
Speaker 1: up today. So Space Robot, So technology is pretty cool. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's impressive and it seems to make a lot of people,
Speaker 1: potentially a lot of money. So, speaking of technology and
Speaker 1: making a lot of money. You know, another cool thing
Speaker 1: you can do with technology is I feel like this
Speaker 1: is a trick go on. You can you can catch
Speaker 1: up with old friends that you haven't seen in twenty
Speaker 1: years on Facebook. No way. And actually our guest today
Speaker 1: is someone who I don't think I've seen probably in
Speaker 1: like twenty two or twenty three years. He's an old
Speaker 1: middle school friend of mine from when I lived in Juliet, Illinois,
Speaker 1: who which is a kind of a suburb of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Is is this what odd thoughts has been reduced to?
Speaker 1: You're just bringing on your your school friends. It is,
Speaker 1: but there's also it is so part of it is
Speaker 1: just an excuse to catch up with an old friend,
Speaker 1: but we're also going to be talking about there's also
Speaker 1: a relevant angle related to technology g because our guest
Speaker 1: is a historian of technology at the Stevens Institute of
Speaker 1: Technology in New Jersey, and he recently gave a great
Speaker 1: speech called the Innovation Fetish, which is about why it's
Speaker 1: so bad that we're obsessed with words like disruption and
Speaker 1: innovation and why it's so perverse that we can't stop
Speaker 1: talking in this sort of nonsense language that we've all
Speaker 1: constructed and come to accept. So those are words that
Speaker 1: we see on almost every technology press release that comes
Speaker 1: our way, right, We we read them and see them unquestionably,
Speaker 1: like no one ever talks about why are we talking
Speaker 1: about innovation so much? And are we really getting anywhere
Speaker 1: by hammering home the importance of innovation and disruption and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship and all these things that we've just sort of
Speaker 1: taken for granted are good and maybe there's a dark
Speaker 1: side to our endless Uh focus on this language of technology? Oh?
Speaker 1: I like this. I like where this is going. All right,
Speaker 1: you might be forgiven for bringing your friends on. Wasn't
Speaker 1: totally contrived? So with us is Leavin Soul. He's a professor,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Leah,
Speaker 1: it's great to see you and thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me here. Uh So your talk uh
Speaker 1: the innovation fetish and your work focused on all these
Speaker 1: all these buzzwords that we just mentioned. So tell us
Speaker 1: about your work and why is it important to focus
Speaker 1: on the language, Uh, focus on these words? Right. So
Speaker 1: I'm a historian of technology. My first book I just
Speaker 1: wrote is on the history of auto regulation in the
Speaker 1: United States. But for this project, what I've been looking
Speaker 1: at is tracking word usage over time, and one surprising
Speaker 1: fact you find is that the term technological innovation only
Speaker 1: comes into use in about the ninth sixties, which, ironically,
Speaker 1: if you read economists and economic historians like Robert Gordon,
Speaker 1: is about the time that really deep and meaningful technological innovation,
Speaker 1: revolutionary innovation kind of came to an end in the
Speaker 1: United States, right because we kind of hit the skids
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and since then, with a couple of
Speaker 1: brief exceptions, we have not gotten back to really deep
Speaker 1: innovation and really meaningful economic growth immediately. So that's very
Speaker 1: interesting and I want to talk about that. But the
Speaker 1: first response that I think most people think is like,
Speaker 1: how can you say that we haven't seen much innovation
Speaker 1: since the sixties and seventies. I mean, our world is
Speaker 1: wildly different, largely thanks to information technology computers and phones
Speaker 1: and the Internet and all this. So this seems to
Speaker 1: be a contestable point right off the bat, that that
Speaker 1: was actually the high water mark for UH innovation as
Speaker 1: opposed to what many people would see is the very
Speaker 1: the founding era of digital technologies and the Internet and
Speaker 1: all these things, right, So how do you back up
Speaker 1: that claim that that was sort of the peak? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the argument Gordon would make
Speaker 1: is that we see a period from about ninety four
Speaker 1: to two thousand four where businesses are adopting email and
Speaker 1: different internet technologies, and we see that in the economic
Speaker 1: growth numbers, but we just don't. For all of the
Speaker 1: hype about innovation and disruption all these things, we actually
Speaker 1: don't see that in our economic growth. So in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, did people suddenly start talking about technological innovation
Speaker 1: or was it a gradual change or how did it
Speaker 1: come about and why? So the way it happened was
Speaker 1: that economists, especially Robert Solo by the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: they they sort of had very good economic statistics and
Speaker 1: they were realizing that tradition all explanations like changes in
Speaker 1: capital and labor just weren't explaining the economic growth. So
Speaker 1: then they hypothesized that that hidden thing was technological change.
Speaker 1: So then amongst the economists and economic historians in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, you see in policymakers too, you see
Speaker 1: more and more focus on innovation as something that we
Speaker 1: should try to foster and encourage. So what's wrong with that?
Speaker 1: Because intuitively, it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with
Speaker 1: policies that promote science and promote the application of science
Speaker 1: to business models, um and the promotion of technologies that
Speaker 1: will make us more efficient. So what is the downside
Speaker 1: to uh this rhetoric? I think there's two major downsides.
Speaker 1: The first is that it's not clear that these policies
Speaker 1: or changes in our institutions are actually getting us that
Speaker 1: innovation right, So we can talk about it a lot,
Speaker 1: but is it actually producing it? And the second part
Speaker 1: is that this focus on innovation often leads us to
Speaker 1: just ignore fundamentals like infrastructure and ordinary labor, because even
Speaker 1: in a very innovative society, most people's labor is going
Speaker 1: into things like just keeping the world going. So is
Speaker 1: the implication here that because technological innovation sounds like a
Speaker 1: sexier kind of topic, that that's why people tend to
Speaker 1: focus on it more when it comes to economic growth.
Speaker 1: Is that what we're saying? Yeah, I mean that's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. It taps into a much longer history,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of fetish around invention. There's cults
Speaker 1: of invention going all the way back to Edison and
Speaker 1: Tesla and people like this. But since nineteen seventy or
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, there really has been this kind of constant
Speaker 1: focus on the sexy topic of innovation to the nicole
Speaker 1: act of many other basic fundamental issues, even basic technological issues.
Speaker 1: Is innovation good and should Let's say there were a
Speaker 1: better way to achieve innovation besides talking about innovation in
Speaker 1: your view? Is that worth pursuing? Is the issue? What
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get at, is the issue with the
Speaker 1: language itself counterproductive? Or is there something more fundamental? Could
Speaker 1: we achieve have higher rates of productivity and innovation by
Speaker 1: thinking about it in some different way? Right? I think
Speaker 1: that there are smarter ways to do innovation policy, and
Speaker 1: I think that in general, innovation is often good. So
Speaker 1: if we can find those ways to do those things,
Speaker 1: we should. But the second part then, is that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we neglect when we just
Speaker 1: focus on innovation. And why is it zero sum? So
Speaker 1: walk us through how policy makers. You know, every state
Speaker 1: wants to be have its own silicon valley and sort
Speaker 1: of incubator programs for new startups, But why does that
Speaker 1: have to be zero sum. Why does the focus on
Speaker 1: all these things necessarily detract from the labor of most people.
Speaker 1: Would you say, maintain maintain the infrastructure, a building infrastructure?
Speaker 1: Why does it have to be one or the other.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example. So Senator uh Sam
Speaker 1: brown Back in Kansas followed traditional conservative economic thinking and
Speaker 1: cutting taxes for the wealthy um in an attempt to
Speaker 1: induce innovation in the state. Now, maybe we've seen some
Speaker 1: job growth and innovation, but what he's ended up doing
Speaker 1: is cutting the tax base, and for that reason, he's
Speaker 1: had to continually tip go into the transportation fund, which
Speaker 1: means that kind of Kansas roads are falling apart. That
Speaker 1: would be one example. Doesn't this just speak to the
Speaker 1: fact that technology is often something that's about, you know,
Speaker 1: a series of small discoveries and then maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: hit a jackpot that's something really revolutionary in terms of technology.
Speaker 1: I mean by pursuing technological innovation, everyone is essentially going
Speaker 1: after that jack pot, right and naturally if they don't
Speaker 1: get the jackpot, then it might look like they've lost out. Um.
Speaker 1: That sounds good to me. I'm not sure how that's
Speaker 1: a counterexample to what I'm trying to say, is it
Speaker 1: essentially if I'm you know, if I'm understanding the question,
Speaker 1: is it basically that if everyone is sort of pursuing
Speaker 1: technological innovation in its own right, and everyone wants to
Speaker 1: be the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: or the next whoever, then that guarantees that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are just going to be major losers, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to have spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money and human endeavor endeavor that gets us nowhere, right,
Speaker 1: But one person is going to get the big payout, right,
Speaker 1: like one person is going to invent the new Facebook.
Speaker 1: That's the problem, right, That's that's part of the problem.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is I think if we look
Speaker 1: at education, for instance, engineering education at the college level,
Speaker 1: it often focuses on innovation. So it's making students think
Speaker 1: to be a good person or a great person, you
Speaker 1: have to be an innovator. And yet about eighty percent
Speaker 1: of engineering labor just goes into maintenance and upkeep, like
Speaker 1: just totally ordinary stuff. And yes, to take care of
Speaker 1: technological systems, introducing new things that introduce new efficiencies is important,
Speaker 1: we know that, but there's a more kind of fundamental
Speaker 1: and basic way of thinking about things, which is caring
Speaker 1: for things. And yes, new things will be a part
Speaker 1: of that overall process. So is this inevitable? I mean,
Speaker 1: in your view, this was a choice. This is a
Speaker 1: value judgment that society has put on innovation, creating something
Speaker 1: new versus maintaining something new, taking pride in keeping the
Speaker 1: infrastructure of society, whether it's sort of physical infrastructure, technological infrastructure,
Speaker 1: working for people. In your view, this is a value
Speaker 1: choice that people have made. That's right. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that they made it intentionally. I think these kind
Speaker 1: of terms, especially very fattish terms, kind of seduce us,
Speaker 1: right because they seem nifty, and especially when people are
Speaker 1: telling you that innovation is how we get all these
Speaker 1: good things, both increases in quality of life and economic growth,
Speaker 1: it's very natural to kind of go after that thing.
Speaker 1: I want to take a quick word for a sponsor,
Speaker 1: but knowledge to work and grow your business with c
Speaker 1: i T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i
Speaker 1: T offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for
Speaker 1: small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i
Speaker 1: T dot com. Put Knowledge to Work. Okay, and we're
Speaker 1: back with Lee Vincel. He's a professor of technological history
Speaker 1: at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and we are talking
Speaker 1: about the innovation fetish and the counterproductivity of our obsession
Speaker 1: with words like innovation and entrepreneurship and disruption. Something that
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in that I think maybe you can
Speaker 1: speak to is you know, we've decided as a culture
Speaker 1: and as a society that people who build a social
Speaker 1: network and become a billionaire a few years later are
Speaker 1: lauded to the moon. They're on the cover of magazines,
Speaker 1: and everyone is told they have to hustle, and everyone
Speaker 1: is told to go out and be the CEO of
Speaker 1: their own their own brand. What what does that do for? Like?
Speaker 1: Who wants to become a teacher in this culture, in
Speaker 1: the culture that rewards sort of going out and scoring
Speaker 1: big so fast. Who who would ever want to have
Speaker 1: like sort of like a simple profession like teaching school children?
Speaker 1: Teaching children, Yeah, it seems wait, but it has to
Speaker 1: be done. On the subway ride over here, I actually
Speaker 1: saw an ad for people becoming teachers and one of
Speaker 1: the taglines was that you could encourage children to be innovators, right,
Speaker 1: so even even to get people into teacher jobs. The
Speaker 1: only way you can do it is through innovation. I saw.
Speaker 1: I also saw someone right running for the local school
Speaker 1: board in Maplewood, New Jersey where I lives, has the
Speaker 1: word their name and it says creativity and innovation. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's like the only point of our education system
Speaker 1: has to be innovation at this point. So what's the
Speaker 1: solution to this problem? Because, like the obvious one, I
Speaker 1: guess is um for governments or policy makers to put
Speaker 1: out some sort of um disincentive program and say we're
Speaker 1: not going to talk about innovation anymore. We want to
Speaker 1: quash all the innovation, which sounds like a pr nightmare, right,
Speaker 1: And I would not do that. Yeah, So what would
Speaker 1: you do? All? Right, there's this is kind of tough
Speaker 1: on one level. What we're trying to do is an
Speaker 1: engender a conversation about this stuff. And what we find
Speaker 1: is just as innovation appeals kind of on both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle to both political parties, we also see
Speaker 1: this maintenance discussion appeal to both political parties. So after
Speaker 1: we had this conference at Stephen's Institute of Technology, it
Speaker 1: got covered by the American Conservative online magazine. So I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things is trying to just create a
Speaker 1: conversation about that. But my co author and I Andy
Speaker 1: Russell were kind of classic progressives, right, So our answer
Speaker 1: would be to put more funding into infrastructure, which luckily
Speaker 1: more and more politicians are talking about, and then also
Speaker 1: thinking about labor policy. So how can we encourage people
Speaker 1: to be teachers when teaching jobs in the United States
Speaker 1: pay so poorly, for instance, So sort of a spend
Speaker 1: more on it, spend more tax people, and spend more
Speaker 1: what about What do you think that would change the
Speaker 1: culture around these things, because I mean I agree, like, yes,
Speaker 1: economics would dictate if you offer teachers more money, you'll
Speaker 1: get more people who want to be teachers. But you still,
Speaker 1: I feel, my gut would be that you still have
Speaker 1: this issue of no one is celebrating teachers and that
Speaker 1: the culture is still encouraging everyone to be a Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg or a Steve Jobs or an Elon musk Um,
Speaker 1: and that you still don't have like culturally, that's that's
Speaker 1: not a thrilling thing for people. Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I can talk about like a public information campaign around maintenance,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna I'm not sure how much that
Speaker 1: actually does. I mean, I think ultimately we have to
Speaker 1: start in the organizations we work in right and recognizing
Speaker 1: those people who are doing all the crucial work to
Speaker 1: just keep things going around us. I wanna go back
Speaker 1: real quickly, because once when I was watching your talk
Speaker 1: and thinking about this idea that this language around innovation
Speaker 1: kind of shot up around the time productivity started to plateau.
Speaker 1: It's interesting thinking about going back to you know, say,
Speaker 1: like the inventors like Edison or Tesla, or the people
Speaker 1: invented the uh, the steam engine. What were people talking
Speaker 1: about back then? Were people talking about we need to
Speaker 1: encourage innovation? Like what was the culture around in those
Speaker 1: eras that got them really excited about inventing. I think
Speaker 1: they were excited about the technologies themselves. They are enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: and there was new technology on the scene. It seemed
Speaker 1: like magic, you know, I mean, the light bulb is
Speaker 1: a piece of magic, and so they were enthusiasts for that.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone had any sense that this was
Speaker 1: going to necessarily lead to economic growth at that time.
Speaker 1: That just wasn't a part of the way they're thinking.
Speaker 1: Was there any sort of rhetoric around the cult of invention,
Speaker 1: Like when did that spring up? Yeah? So that you
Speaker 1: know it, it develops throughout the twentie centuries. By the
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, corporations are creating things like the House
Speaker 1: of Magic that was g e and so you you
Speaker 1: started to see more and more encouragement of getting young
Speaker 1: people to think about technology and engineering. And then of
Speaker 1: course in the fifties, you know, this starts stuff starts
Speaker 1: to be tied really connect closely with the Cold War
Speaker 1: and like beating the Russians and things like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of what I deal with in my written work
Speaker 1: is how in the United States innovation is often tied
Speaker 1: to fear of other people. Right, So, and you know,
Speaker 1: we can think of the Cold War and science and
Speaker 1: technology and the Russians. But then in the eighties, innovation
Speaker 1: is really focused on the Japanese as a threat and
Speaker 1: as an economic threat, and of course by the nineties
Speaker 1: and two thousands then that switches to the Chinese and
Speaker 1: it's all about the United States place in the global
Speaker 1: economic system. So despite Silicon Valleys a sort of rhetoric
Speaker 1: about technology bringing everyone together, there's actually deep rooted relationship
Speaker 1: to fear of others that's quite ironic. So I have
Speaker 1: a maybe it's a stupid question, but if we think
Speaker 1: that part of this problem has to do with the
Speaker 1: language itself and the use of terms like disruption and innovation,
Speaker 1: could we solve the problem by just using other words
Speaker 1: like instead of technological innovation, could we say something more boring,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, mechanical advancement. Could we call like
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg the the I T guy that like got
Speaker 1: lucky with that work. I mean that would work for me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it would work for others. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, think about disruption. So people are still using
Speaker 1: the word disruption a lot, and yet social scientists over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years have really undermined Clayton Christensen's
Speaker 1: notion of disruption and show that it happens far less
Speaker 1: frequently than he assumed, and that it's far less important
Speaker 1: for the overall economy than he said. And that's not
Speaker 1: leaking into the broader community of users, right. I've noticed
Speaker 1: that with them things like disruption and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and the disruptive innovation, that the theory that that's important
Speaker 1: they seems to be kind of unfalsifiable because every time
Speaker 1: there's some counterexample, you're like, oh no, you don't really
Speaker 1: get the theory that actually like And so it's sort
Speaker 1: of hard to pin down what that really means. But
Speaker 1: if you use his term, I think he had like
Speaker 1: ninety cases that he thought were case of disruption innovation.
Speaker 1: When economists re analyze that data, they found that only
Speaker 1: like seven cases of his ninety cases actually fit. What
Speaker 1: is it? What is his definition and why does why
Speaker 1: do most examples failed to achieve it? I'm not sure
Speaker 1: in that study what definition they were working with, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that classic definition of is the
Speaker 1: introduction of a new process or technology that undermines a
Speaker 1: traditional industry. One thing I saw a stat last night.
Speaker 1: I think it was just on Twitter, And so this
Speaker 1: is like the worst kind of like journalism or punditry,
Speaker 1: because I'm just mindlessly repeating something I saw it better.
Speaker 1: But that something like the percentage of output in the
Speaker 1: US economy that's done by like the top ten companies
Speaker 1: is significantly bigger than it was ten or twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: which sort of undermines this idea that technology is creating
Speaker 1: this world. Really, incumbents are always collapsing in fact, you
Speaker 1: look at the economic landscape and it seems to be
Speaker 1: dominated by incumbents that are harder and harder to remove
Speaker 1: from their perch or even look at something like a
Speaker 1: lot of people have talked about this that if you
Speaker 1: look at say the app store on your iPhone, the
Speaker 1: top twenty five apps, almost everyone is either from Facebook,
Speaker 1: Google or Amazon. There's actually and most the apps have
Speaker 1: like one download or zero down right, and there's actually
Speaker 1: very little churn of who's who's leading at the very top. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that this part of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do with our Maintainers project. We're having the
Speaker 1: second conference in April at Stevens, because we're just trying
Speaker 1: to find more realistic and grounded ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: the economy and technology. Right, So the kind of factoid
Speaker 1: you just threw out there is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing we would point to and say, look at where
Speaker 1: rhetoric is pushing us and thinking about the economy, and
Speaker 1: then look at how the things are actually playing out
Speaker 1: on the ground. So, in a sort of conclusion, what
Speaker 1: do you let's talk about some goals. I mean, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that like exploring the gap between our rhetoric and
Speaker 1: what's actually happening. But what are a few things that
Speaker 1: you'd like everyone to be thinking about and uh going
Speaker 1: forward with this discussion because I think, ink, you know,
Speaker 1: this is so novel, this idea to question the cult
Speaker 1: of this that at this point you just want to
Speaker 1: have the discussion about it. But what are some big
Speaker 1: things that you'd really like people to be thinking about
Speaker 1: specifically to reground the discussion in a more in a
Speaker 1: productive way. I mean, so right, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the goal is to get people to think about what
Speaker 1: technology is and what what it's doing in their lives.
Speaker 1: So most of the technologies around us are very old,
Speaker 1: you know. We can think of like box fans, which
Speaker 1: have been around for a century and haven't changed. I
Speaker 1: assembled a fan, uh the other day, and I was
Speaker 1: pretty proud of myself because I'm not much of an assembler.
Speaker 1: But I actually say so, I just want I just
Speaker 1: want to get that in there for the record. So
Speaker 1: I think it's about thinking thinking about technology in a
Speaker 1: grounded way, remember reminding ourselves what it is, and then
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves that what most people do in our society
Speaker 1: is just keep this world going, feeding ourselves, feeding each other,
Speaker 1: making sure things don't fall down on us. And yes,
Speaker 1: innovation is important for the technological world around us, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't play as big of a role as kind
Speaker 1: of hypemongers want us to believe. Well, leave Insel, Professor
Speaker 1: at the Steven's Institute of Technology. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for coming in. Thank you for having me forward to
Speaker 1: your conferences coming up next spring. Yeah, that's right. What's
Speaker 1: it called the maintainers too? Great? Well, we'll check it
Speaker 1: out and um maybe we'll maybe I'll come down for it.
Speaker 1: That sounds to send someone down and uh again, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for coming in. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for having me. Uh so, Tracy, do you think I
Speaker 1: totally abused my position by having one of my just
Speaker 1: bringing one of my old middle school friends in. Yeah. Nepotism.
Speaker 1: Nepotism right here. No, that that was totally interesting and
Speaker 1: well worth a discussion and very as you said, very
Speaker 1: very counterintuitive to the way that most people think about technology. Um,
Speaker 1: but I expect it it might not be forever. Right.
Speaker 1: You are seeing more people talking about the potential negative
Speaker 1: effects of rapid technological change. Um, it's impact on productivity
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, and also deflation. So who knows maybe
Speaker 1: more people will come around to this view in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one thing that you said, you said it's not intuitive,
Speaker 1: and I agree. But you think back to even the
Speaker 1: people that we celebrate in sort of the era of innovation,
Speaker 1: like after the sixties when we first started talking about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know exactly what was in Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg's head when he founded Facebook, but I doubt it
Speaker 1: was him saying, oh, I want to be an innovator
Speaker 1: and I want to be uh, I want to innovate.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, I want to create this cool
Speaker 1: thing to uh, you know, meet people at my college
Speaker 1: or uh, meet girls. I think it was specifically where
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs wanted to simplified a phone whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It does. None of these people that we revere as
Speaker 1: great innovators probably were really excited about innovation itself as
Speaker 1: a end. It was they were excited about some project
Speaker 1: they were working on, and they were not the product
Speaker 1: of you know, I want to I want to be
Speaker 1: an innovator. I totally agree with that, But do you think, like,
Speaker 1: were they excited about being maintainers like to use these
Speaker 1: were Like, I don't think that was it either. I
Speaker 1: think we have to find culturally maybe a middle ground
Speaker 1: between innovation and maintenance. No, I think that's right. They
Speaker 1: none of those folks seem like they wanted to be maintainers.
Speaker 1: But it would be nice, as you say, if there
Speaker 1: if we could have a world for both where we
Speaker 1: obviously we celebrate the people who make inventions that change
Speaker 1: our lives and the sort of the energy that that takes,
Speaker 1: while also recognizing that most of the good things we
Speaker 1: have in life are the product of people were entirelessly
Speaker 1: to maintain our systems in in functional order. I like that.
Speaker 1: That's well said. I mean I will just one last
Speaker 1: thing I will say the next time, next time we
Speaker 1: get a press release that contains both the words innovation
Speaker 1: and disruption, I'm going to email a link to this podcast. Well.
Speaker 1: On that note, this has been another edition of the
Speaker 1: Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at The Stalwart. I'm Tracy Alloway. I'm on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Tracy Alloway. You can follow thee at sts
Speaker 1: Underscore News. Thanks for listening. But knowledge to work and
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