"The Tinkerers": How corporations kill creativity

From Timbuktu Chronicles Fri Jan 4 2013, 11:00:00

In Salon Alec Foege provides some excerpts from "The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great":

...what do I mean by tinkering, in contemporary terms? At its most basic level, tinkering is making something genuinely new out of the things that already surround us. Secondly, tinkering is something that happens without an initial sense of purpose, or at least with a purpose quite different from the one originally identified. Tinkering also emanates from a place of passion or obsession. Lastly, tinkering is a disruptive act in which the tinkerer pivots from history and begins a new journey that results in innovation, invention, and illumination.

Increasingly, however, American tinkering is the unlikely byproduct of a country driven by greed and conformity. Within our success as a nation and a global economy lies a paradox. The United States, with its highly disciplined approach to capitalism, invented the modern corporation and the marvelous, ...

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