May 2006

The beginning & end of innovation

Posted by Grant Brewer on 01 May 2006 | Comments (0)

The narrator of the Academy Award® winning film Seabiscuit makes an interesting statement at the start of the film when commenting on the invention of mass production and the motor car by Henry Ford. He says "it was the beginning and end of innovation – all at the same time". That the development of factory lines mass producing standardised cars could be seen as both the epitome of the division of labour and efficiency described by the famous economist Adam Smith, and also seen as the end of an era of innovative and highly skilled individual craftsmen raises some interesting parallels into the modern economy.