If you want a far more detailed discussion, especially one that goes into why it can't work, see Eamonn Fingleton's book Unsustainable (or the earlier version I

If you want a far more detailed discussion, especially one that goes into why it can't work, see Eamonn Fingleton's book Unsustainable (or the earlier version In Praise of Hard Industries, there is little difference between them). And if you want a good story about specifically how innovation grows out of practice, see Bob Johnstone's We Were Burning about the Japanese development of the first blue-light laser diode.