Moderator Introduction

Greg Adamson introduced the panel on Wiener's approach to innovation by drawing on Wiener's posthumously published book "Invention: The Care and Feeding of Ideas." He highlighted Wiener's provocative argument that "simply by grouping together huge numbers of inventors in large corporations, you don't encourage creativity," a critique of industrialized research that remains sharply relevant to contemporary debates about innovation management.

Adamson noted Wiener's observation that history's most transformative innovations often came from individuals working with minimal tools and institutional support. This framing challenged the prevailing assumption that innovation scales linearly with investment and organizational size, setting up a panel discussion that would examine the complex relationships among creativity, institutional structure, technology policy, and economic forces.