How to Innovate, Aristotle
How to Innovate, Aristotle
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How to Innovate
An Ancient Guide to Creative Thinking

Author: Aristotle, Armand D'Angour

Narrator: Shaun Grindell

Unabridged: 1 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/02/2021

Synopsis

What we can learn about fostering innovation and creative thinking from some of the most inventive people of all times—the ancient Greeks.

When it comes to innovation and creative thinking, we are still catching up with the ancient Greeks. Between 800 and 300 BCE, they changed the world with astonishing inventions—democracy, the alphabet, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematical proof, rational medicine, coins, architectural canons, drama, lifelike sculpture, and competitive athletics. None of this happened by accident. Recognizing the power of the new and trying to understand and promote the conditions that make it possible, the Greeks were the first to write about innovation and even the first to record a word for forging something new. In short, the Greeks "invented" innovation itself—and they still have a great deal to teach us about it.

How to Innovate is an engaging and entertaining introduction to key ideas about—and examples of—innovation and creative thinking from ancient Greece. Armand D'Angour provides lively new translations of selections from Aristotle, Diodorus, and Athenaeus. These writings illuminate and illustrate timeless principles of creating something new—borrowing or adapting existing ideas or things, cross-fertilizing disparate elements, or criticizing and disrupting current conditions.

About Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato, and a tutor to Alexander the Great. His writings, on such diverse subjects as rhetoric, logic, politics, ethics, biology, physics, and poetry, comprise some of the foundations of Western philosophy. He wrote as many as 200 treatises during his lifetime, of which only 31 survive. Of these, Aristotle's best-known works include Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, and On the Soul.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Tullius

I enjoyed the book. It's simply a short study into leaders in the Ancient world from an Ancient perspective. Luctra is mentioned as a battle that required thinking outside the box for the time.......more

Goodreads review by Angela

Given that the ancient Greeks are credited with inventing philosophy, democracy, logic, rhetoric, drama, and competitive athletics, they must surely be able to offer plenty of inspiration on how to be innovative. The book’s subtitle promises “an ancient guide to creative thinking”, and while a trans......more

Goodreads review by Massimo

The ancient Greeks have a reputation for not being innovators. Which is rather odd, given that they invented the very word, kainotomia, which was used by the dramatist Aristophanes back in the 5th century BCE. They also invented the alphabet (borrowing and adapting from the Phoenicians), philosophy,......more

Goodreads review by Vincent Amanor-Boadu

Wanting more This work summarized important activities and ideas about innovation and change in antiquity. Focusing on Aristotle was interesting, especially this criticism of the proposals presented by others. The question of equity seems to occupy the creative investments of the late antiquity think......more

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