How to Fly A Horse The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery
Author(s): Kevin Ashton
There is a myth about how something new comes to be; that geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole. Poems are written in dreams. Symphonies are composed complete. Science is accomplished with eureka shrieks. Businesses are built by magic touch. The myth is wrong. Anyone can create. Necessity is not the mother of invention. We all are. In How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery, acclaimed technology pioneer Kevin Ashton takes us behind the scenes of creation to reveal the true process of discovery. From Archimedes to Apple, from Kandinsky to the Coke can, from the Wright brothers - who set out to 'fly a horse' - to Woody Allen, he exposes the seemingly unremarkable individuals, gradual steps, multiple failures and countless ordinary and often uncredited acts that led to our most astounding breakthroughs. Along the way he explores why innovators meet resistance and how they overcome it, why most organisations stifle creative people, and how the most creative organisations really work. In a passionate and profound narrative, How to Fly a Horse explodes the myths on how 'new' comes to be.
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"Ashton is persuasive ... His well chosen examples reinforce the idea that there is no magic or myth to creation or discovery, making this an approachable, thought-provoking book that encourages everyone to be as good as they can be." Observer "Many of these anecdotes are rather lovely - a chapter on the credit denied female scientists is fascinating" Daily Telegraph
Kevin Ashton was an Executive Director and visiting engineer at MIT, where he led pioneering work on the next generation of computing, which he called 'the Internet of Things', now a widely used term. He has spoken on innovation and technology to audiences in the United States, South America, Asia and Europe. He has been published in the Independent, Quartz and Medium, and profiled and interviewed by media including the New York Times, The Economist, Time, Forbes, NPR and the BBC. He was a leader at three successful technology start-ups, the most recent of which, Zensi, he co-founded, led as CEO and sold to Belkin International in 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
General Fields
- :
- : Penguin Random House
- : William Heinemann Ltd
- : 0.445
- : 01 November 2014
- : 234mm X 153mm
- : United Kingdom
- : 01 March 2015
- : books
Special Fields
- : Kevin Ashton
- : Paperback
- : English
- : 306.42
- : 336