Table of Contents
1 The Plow 1
Introduction 7
I Winners and Losers 13
2 The Gramophone 15
3 Barbed Wire 20
4 Seller Feedback 26
5 Google Search 31
6 Passports 36
7 Robots 41
8 The Welfare State 46
II Reinventing How We Live 53
9 Infant Formula 55
10 TV Dinners 60
11 The Pill 65
12 Video Games 70
13 Market Research 74
14 Air-Conditioning 78
15 Department Stores 83
III Inventing New Systems 89
16 The Dynamo 91
17 The Shipping Container 96
18 The Bar Code 102
19 The Cold Chain 107
20 Tradable Debt and the Tally Stick 112
21 The Billy Bookcase 117
22 The Elevator 121
IV Ideas About Ideas 127
23 Cuneiform 129
24 Public-Key Cryptography 134
25 Double-Entry Bookkeeping 139
26 Limited Liability Companies 145
27 Management Consulting 150
28 Intellectual Property 155
29 The Compiler 160
V Where Do Inventions Come From? 165
30 The iPhone 167
31 Diesel Engines 171
32 Clocks 176
33 Chemical Fertilizer 181
34 Radar 186
35 Batteries 191
36 Plastic 196
VI The Visible Hand 201
37 The Bank 205
38 Razors and Blades 207
39 Tax Havens 212
40 Leaded Gasoline 217
41 Antibiotics in Farming 222
42 M-Pesa 227
43 Property Registers 232
VII Inventing the Wheel 237
44 Paper 239
45 Index Funds 244
46 The S-Bend 249
47 Paper Money 255
48 Concrete 260
49 Insurance 265
Conclusion: Looking Forward 270
50 Epilogue: The Lightbulb 277
Acknowledgments 283
Notes 285
Index 309