By Malcolm Gladwell
One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.
Continue reading the article . . .
Solari Report Blog Commentaries
Thank You, Steve Jobs!
(6 Oct 11)
Quote du Jour
(5 Sep 11)
Related reading:
Whole Earth Catalog revisited: Steve Job’s Google of the 60s
Faircompanies (31 Oct 11)
Steve Jobs Muses on All Things Apple
The New York Times (2 June 10)
