As crises multiply, ingenuity lags. This prescient classic explains why societies falter when problems outpace solutions—and offers a roadmap to close the gap before risks from climate shocks, pandemics, inequality, and AI spiral beyond control.
First published at the turn of the millennium, The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon anticipated the turbulent world we now inhabit: pandemics, climate disasters, political polarization, disruptive runaway technologies, and escalating global instability. With remarkable foresight, Homer-Dixon warned that the complexity of our problems would accelerate faster than our collective ingenuity to solve them—and that failure to close this “gap” would leave societies fragile and exposed. A quarter century later, his vision has proven prophetic.
Homer-Dixon takes readers on a global tour of ingenuity under pressure: from the desperate improvisation of pilots fighting to land United Airlines Flight 232 in Iowa, to the water-hungry expansion of Las Vegas, to a harrowing search for a missing child in Patna, and the collapse of Canada’s cod fisheries. Vivid and far-reaching, it is a sweeping portrait of what happens when societies are stretched beyond their capacity to adapt and an enlightening case for why ingenuity is humanity’s most vital resource.
Celebrating over twenty-five years in print, The Ingenuity Gap remains both a visionary diagnosis of our age and a call to reimagine how we generate creativity, resilience, and leadership in uncertain times.