Ask HN: What are the best examples of innovation you know?

The Innovator's Dilemma book by Clayton Christensen might help one get a better idea of what innovation is.

Basically, an innovation is a new type of product that can replace an existing product type at accomplishing a job. Some examples would be cars replacing horses, remote or hybrid work replacing traditional work, cloud infrastructure replacing on-premise infrastructure, Netflix replacing video rental, etc..

Usually the disrupting innovation isn't as good as the traditional product type at the onset but gradually improves until it becomes the dominant option.

Carl Edvard Johansson saw the need for a better way of making precise measurements. He came up with the idea of making a set of gauge blocks that were stepped in regular size increments, so that you could stack them to get any arbitrary size. This replaced the older system of having a set of gauge blocks used to set up equipment, and having to make and transport a set of those gauges anywhere else those sizes were to be used.

He searched for and found just the right steel to use, that would hold its measurement over time. He perfected the manufacturing of his gauge block sets which were sold around the world.

Without this ability to precisely and accurately set standards for length, the mass production systems perfected by Henry Ford would not have been possible. This is reflected in the fact that Henry Ford only allowed 2 people to enter his office without knocking first, his son Edsel, and Edvard Johansson.

Today you can buy a starter set of gauge blocks that are traceable back to NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) for less than $200. With those, you can reliably set distances in steps of 0.0001" Sets are available in both Inch and Metric sizes.

I think the iPhone is the perfect example of innovation. At the time you had cell phones with SMS and you had MP3 music players like iPod, etc. Innovation there is combining it all into one product with a touch screen. Blackberry was the closest but still their designs were strongly based on SMS messaging.

What isn't innovation: adding more megapixels to a camera lens on a phone or more <something> (CPU speed, hard drive size, network speed, etc.) which is more about us finding better ways to engineer something and shrinking existing tech. There may be innovations in the process but I don't see those as innovative products themselves.

Innovation is about new ideas, improvement is about better implementation of old ideas. That's how I think of it. Something like Khronos, the high speed camera company, which has a lot of innovation (vastly different architecture which helped them reduce costs and make a better specced product than competitors).

Web Browsers, because they do so much. Looking at how all the components work in tandem is always fascinating to explore. The Brave browser is excellent and challenging surveillance economies and they're doing a great job on privacy, even baking in Tor and crypto features. It's a modern marvel of innovation IMHO.

Lyft/Uber, simple and solved a real need, changed how people get around.

Apple I and II. Unix. Plan 9. Bitkeeper. TeX.

The freight container. The seat belt. Carl Edvard Johansson’s “Jo blocks”. Ball bearings.

HTH (^_^)