This book is the product of my collective brain of family and friends, experts and colleagues, editors and publishers. Together, they contributed to and vastly improved the final product. I am eternally grateful. My agent, Eric Lupfer immediately understood the concepts I wanted to convey and helped me refine the message. From proposal to final form, Eric has been invaluable. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: thank you for the introduction to Eric. In addition to Eric, I also had the support of several editors, including my wife Stephanie Salgado, who provided extensive feedback at every stage. I am grateful to Bob Prior at MIT Press and Nick Davies at John Murray Press for understanding the message of the book and believing in its importance. Jonathan Balcombe and Christine Fenner both provided detailed editorial support on early versions and Sarah Caro provided extensive comments on the final manuscript, really helping to polish the final product. Thanks also to Hilary Hammond and Caroline Westmore for their helpful copy-editing, to the design teams at MIT Press and John Murray Press for their gorgeous book covers, and to Veronika Plant and Abheeth Salgado who both offered feedback on drafts of the cover, even creating mock-ups and suggestions.
I am also incredibly grateful to Matthew Syed. I have long admired Matthew's seemingly effortless ability to communicate the most complex concepts so clearly. When I first described the research and shared a very early manuscript, Matthew's excitement provided much motivation. He generously sat down with me for hours, helping me craft better analogies, suggesting sections that needed to be better explained, and guiding me in writing a better introduction. Matthew is as generous as he is brilliant. Of my other author friends, David Bodanis offered a lot of early encouragement, feedback, and professional tips on the writing and publication process when this book was just an idea.
I am grateful to the many researchers and professionals who generously shared their expertise and feedback on relevant sections. Particular thanks goes to energy expert Charles Hall, who spent hours talking to me over Zoom and who offered detailed comments on the entire manuscript. Thank you also to Abdel Abdellaoui (genetics), Tim Besley (economics), Daniel Muthukrishna (physics – it was in a conversation with Dan that the title emerged), Rachel Spicer (biology), Emily Burdett (developmental psychology), Helen Elizabeth Davis, Will Gervais, and Ivan Kroupin (IQ and intelligence), Jamie Heywood (Uber and innovation), Cameron Murray (land taxes and Singapore's housing policies), Julian Ashwin (free speech), Nicolai Tangen (Norway's oil fund), David Yang (China's politics and meritocracy), Sandya Salgado (marketing), Kurtis Lockhart (start-up cities), Briitta van Staalduinen (data on how people find jobs around the world), Sarah Beck (for sharing her videos with me), Mark Nielsen (for information about his studies with Bushmen in South Africa), Philipp Koellinger (for permission to use the brain volume – IQ graph and confirming the correct interpretation), Ryutaro Uchiyama (kaizen and shuhari), Josh Tan (cryptocurrencies, programmable politics, and decentralized autonomous organizations), Marc Warner (social media and AI), and Adam D’Angelo (AI and energy requirements).
Thank you also to my students who patiently read the manuscript, offering fact checking and feedback. Robin Schimmelpfennig went through almost the entire manuscript with me, offering his invaluable unvarnished feedback. Zoé Vanhersecke read every chapter in detail, performed extensive fact checking, and helped with recreating graphs. Zoé was also the person who first suggested the acronym COMPASS. Theiss Bendixen offered helpful comments on overall framing during the early stages. Navdeep Kaur helped me with some final fact checking. Nicole George read the whole manuscript as a model reader, and gave extensive feedback on every chapter. Other early readers who offered feedback on various chapters include Chris Muthukrishna, Shanthi Muthukrishna, Penny Gray, Clinton Freeman, and David Ryan. Andrew McAfee read the whole book as a model academic reader, with helpful feedback on his wide range of expertise and thoughts on how others working on technology and innovation might react to the arguments.
More informal feedback came from conversations over the years with many people, in particular Joe Henrich, Mark Schaller, Steve Heine, Ara Norenzayan, Michael Doebeli, Patrick Francois, Nathan Nunn, Penny Sanderson, David Liu, Clinton Freeman, Ben Cole, Ben Cheung, Aiyana Willard, Dan Randles, Wanying Zhao, Charles Stafford, Natasha Griffiths, Roger Frosh, Matthew Hindhaugh, and Charlotte Rowan.
My family around the world opened their homes, helped with childcare, and offered me physical and mental space to focus and finish the book during my sabbatical. For three long months, Hiranya Dharmaratne helped look after our children in London. It was during this time that much of the book was finalized. Shanthi Muthukrishna and Ruvan Dharmaratne also helped with childcare at various stages. Manju, Minoli, and Peter Haththotuwa allowed us to stay for weeks in their beautiful home in the peaceful surrounds of Arlington, Virginia. Renata Dharmaratne graciously hosted our whole family and helped care for our children for two months in Brisbane, Australia. Damian Leggat also patiently helped with everything from childcare to meals. Swarnamali, Rajpal, Sudharma, and Kavisha Salgado hosted us and helped with childcare during an intense bout of final editing in Sri Lanka. Many other people offered us a peaceful place to stay, including Sandya and Priyath Salgado and Saro Ramakrishna. I am grateful to all for their hospitality and support.
Almost all the amazing illustrations in this book are thanks to the incredibly talented Veronika Plant. Veronika brilliantly and creatively brought these ideas to life in her characteristic style. I can't thank her enough for working so quickly – including on her anniversary – to get all the illustrations done on time.
Finally, I would like to thank my three children, Robert, Alexandra, and Gabriele, to whom this book is dedicated. Thank you for understanding why Daddy was working so much and sometimes seemed deeply lost in his own thoughts. Above all, I am grateful to my greatest critic, biggest supporter, first and last editor, and love of my life, Stephanie Salgado. She helped shaped the ideas in this book through our many debates and discussions, encouraged me and gave me the time and head space to work on it, and read more versions than anyone else. So much of this book is thanks to Steph.