Even the most casual reader of Technology Review can't avoid coming to the obvious conclusion: there's no shortage of creative people with creative ideas. Quite the contrary, in disciplines ranging from software to biotechnology to materials science, the rate of technical change has accelerated far more rapidly than the ability of most markets to successfully absorb it.

The problem isn't figuring out how to get people to become more "innovative"; it's figuring out how to get people to accept and apply innovations more productively. The glut of new ideas has paradoxically created a critical shortage of the human ingredients that determine just how quickly and cost effectively they get used.