When Michael Shermer and three friends started a bicycle race across America in the 1980s, they began with virtually no rules. Only with experience did they have to bring in rules about how to deal with being arrested for causing a traffic jam on a hill in Arizona and other such unexpected complications. So while it is true that institutional innovators in the public sphere are just as vital as technological innovators in the private, I suspect that specialisation is the key to both. Just as becoming a specialist axe maker for the whole tribe gives you the time, the capital and the market to
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