This is about spread of innovation. He talks about anesthesia and antisepsis, but you can easily see parallels to technology. He talks about understanding existing norms and barriers to change and how neither incentives nor penalties really work. Very interesting. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to best institute change in the organization and why certain teams fail, even though they produce great products from an engineering perspective. This offers some insight into that. If you’re attacking a big, but a mostly invisible problem, it is very hard to get other people bought in.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/07/29/130729fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all