How Coaches Matter
Today’s blog is inspired by an article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson: “Why the Age of American Progress Ended.” Thompson’s thesis is that, while we worship eureka moments that lead to inventions, those inventions, on their own, don’t change the world. Change depends on whether and how those inventions are implemented, that is, made available to the rest of us. The light bulb and the telephone have no value if people can’t get them. Thompson illustrated his point with the story of the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox was no small matter. It killed millions of people every year for centuries. Enter Edward Jenner, who, after a eureka idea, experimented with inoculating one boy against smallpox. It worked! But . . . “Consider the actual scale of Edward Jenner’s accomplishment the day he pricked James Phipps in 1796. Exactly one person had been vaccinated in a world of roughly 1 billion…