Innovation
Invention and Innovation
Vaclav Smil, prolific author of several best selling book, published “Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure” (2023) with MIT Press. The book presents a three-part approach to assessing invention and innovation, which examines: (1) inventions that works but we later learned caused harm – leaded gasoline, DDT, CFCs; (2) Inventions we […]
Tags: #Failure #Innovation #Invention #Invention and Innovation #Vaclav Smil
Power and Progress
Turkish-American economist and recent Nobel prize winner, Daron Acemoglu, along with British-American economist and also recent Nobel prize winner, Simon Johnson, penned the 2023 book Power and Progress. Given the star power, one starts the book with high expectations. There are a number of books that survey the history of innovation, such as Ridley’s 2020 […]
Tags: #Acemoglu #Inclusive innovation #Innovation #Power and Progress #Simon Johnson
How Innovation Works
Matt Ridley’s book How Innovation Works (2020) is a mass market book that offers a thematic run down of innovations (in health, energy, transportation, etc). The chapters are mostly brief descriptions, with little on the “so what?” of the innovation processes. When there are very interesting questions, such as simultaneous innovations in distant locations, these […]
Tags: #Experiment #Incentives #Innovation #Matt Ridley #Research
Enemies of Innovation
Dr. Calestous Juma’s new book, “Innovation and its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies” (2016), explains that this is a book Dr. Juma has wanted to write since his early engagement with innovation. That includes his founding of the African Centre for Technology Studies in 1988, being a former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological […]
2016 UN Momentum for Change Awards
Applications are being accepted from 19 February to 25 April. Spearheaded by the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, Momentum for Change shines a light on the most innovative, scalable and replicable examples of what people around the world are doing to tackle climate change. Who: Organizations, communities, cities, businesses, governments and others that are taking concrete […]
Tags: #Award #Climate change #Innovation #Lighthouse Activity #Scalability
NGO Lessons from Oshinsky’s (2005) Polio: An American Story
NGO lessons from Oshinsky’s (2005) Polio: An American Story. Not a summary or review, but some thought provoking quotes: Strategic planning and framing of the issue: “No disease drew as much attention, or struck the same terror, as polio. And for good reason. Polio hit without warning. There was no way of telling who would […]
Tags: #Innovation #institutional barriers #Leadership #Polio #Strategic Planning
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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