Podcast: Download (Duration: 40:42 — 58.4MB)
“What is good and worth preserving?” This question has driven today’s guests on Getting Work To Work at multiple levels. Lee Vinsel is an Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Andy Russell is a Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Together they are co-directors of The Maintainers and co-authors of The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most. In this conversation, Lee and Andy share about being historians of standards and their love for the ordinary. They also talk about how their fascination with standards led them to the topic of maintenance and the difference between true innovation versus innovation-speak. Along the way, they share insights that we can all learn and apply to our lives, organizations, and society at large. They even share how they learned to work together and write as a team.
Show Links
- Lee Vinsel
- Andrew L. Russell
- The Maintainers
- The Innovation Delusion: How Our Obsession with the New Has Disrupted the Work That Matters Most by Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell
- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
- Strong Towns
- The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton
- More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology From The Open Hearth To The Microwave by Ruth Schwartz Cowan
- Society for the History of Technology
- Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp and Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995 by Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell
- Outbreak: Foodborne Illness and the Struggle for Food Safety by Timothy D. Lytton
- Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze
- Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
- Support Getting Work To Work on ChrisMartinStudios.shop!
- Sign up for my weekly newsletter: The Curiosity Lab
