[jhoechtl]

You are right. But the initial spark often comes from one person, think of Westinghouse and Tesla. Tesla was the technical genius yet he needed Westingshouse economical/financial power-networks to get parts of his ideas through.

Therefore AC power is undoublty a Westinghouse/Tesla/ many others accomplishment yet without the relentless pushing and originality of one person (Tesla) to step out of the giant Edison AC would not have come a reality at its time.

So I think we see two things here: Ingenuity and true novel approaches are (according to my observation) very often the think of one passionate person, the societal breakthrough requires hands and ties working together.

As the second requires the first yet we as a society overemphasize on teamwork already in step one, we are actively hampering innovation. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24374363

[enigmatic0202]

Very cool example. Agree with your point. What I meant by history isn’t actually made by singular heroes is that simultaneous innovation tends to be the norm. Not sure if that applies to the Tesla example, but for most other iconic moments like the lightbulb, there were dozens of people who independently arrived at the same invention.