📪 HH #80: The epic evolution of human innovation
- Justin Hubbard
- May 10
- 16 min read
TL;DR – This week’s newsletter is a walk through time—from the first humans using sharpened rocks to the business titans of steel, oil, and finance, and finally into today’s AI-driven world.
You’ll see how each major leap—from hand tools to machines to software—transformed not just how we work, but what kind of businesses win.
🏹 We started by shaping the world with simple tools
🚂 Then came machines, factories, and mass production
💡 The industrial giants like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan mastered systems and scale
📦 Fast-forward to Walton, Gates, and Ellison—who used logistics, software, and data to build modern empires
🤖 Now, AI is the new frontier—amplifying our decision-making, speed, and creativity
And yeah, not ironically, I used an AI language model to help me research and write this issue. That alone says a lot—we’re already living in the transition.
The takeaway?
Every era rewards the ones who adapt fast and lead with vision. This one is no different.Understand the past. Leverage the now. Position yourself for what’s next.
Full article 👇
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about AI—not just the hype, but the real shift happening right now. And the more I reflect on it, the more it feels like we’re living through another one of those rare, world-changing revolutions.
We’ve seen a few before. The moment we picked up tools. The age of steam and steel. The rise of the personal computer. Each time, it rewired what it meant to work, build, and lead.
So in this newsletter, I want to take a step back.
Let’s walk through the big moments in human development—from the first stone tools to the industrial titans, to the software age—and land on where we are now, standing at the edge of the AI era.
And not ironically, I used AI—specifically a large language model (LLM)—to help me dig through the research and organize my thoughts for this one. That alone should say something. We're already living in the shift.
I won’t hit everything. That’s not the point. But I want to show the thread. Because when you understand where we’ve been, you get a clearer picture of where we’re going—and how you, as a business owner and builder, can step into what’s next with intention.
The Dawn: Hands, Tools, and Early Mastery of Nature
Our story begins millions of years ago on the African savanna, where early humans first picked up stones and sticks to shape their world. The earliest known stone tools date back roughly 2.6 million years – simple sharpened rocks that gave our ancestors an edge in hunting and butchery.
With these tools (and the opposable thumbs to wield them), humans transcended the limits of bare hands. They learned to craft weapons like hand axes and spears, extending their reach over prey and predators alike. In time, they also carved small figurines from bone, antler, and stone – the first artworks – showing an urge not just to survive but to create.
By the Neolithic era (the New Stone Age), humanity had discovered agriculture. They domesticated plants and animals and invented the plow to till the soil, initially a simple wooden ard pulled by humans and later by oxen around the 4th millennium BCE. These humble wooden plows allowed early farmers to turn wilderness into farmland, yielding food surpluses that gave rise to villages and, eventually, the first cities.
Armed with tools, from flint knives to ox-drawn plows, early humans were no longer at nature’s mercy – they became its shapers.
The Industrial Age: Minds Forge a New World
Fast-forward thousands of years to the Industrial Revolution, when humanity’s ingenuity ignited an explosion of progress. If the prior ages were about muscle and manual tools, the industrial age was about machines and mental mastery – using brainpower to harness new energy sources and invent complex mechanisms.
Steam engines, power looms, and railroads multiplied what one person’s labor could accomplish. A single coal-fired engine could do the work of dozens of horses or hundreds of hands, uprooting the old limits of production.
In America, this era came slightly later but with even greater force. Factories sprouted along rivers and rail lines; smokestacks rose where there had been only church spires on the skyline.
For the first time, output and growth depended more on clever innovation – engineering, organization, strategy – than on sheer physical effort. It was an age of iron and steam giving way to steel and electricity, of human intellect applied to industry on a massive scale.
By the late 1800s, the United States was transforming from a young agrarian nation into an industrial powerhouse, guided by visionary minds who mastered not only the new technologies but the art of business itself.
Titans of the Gilded Age: Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan
The turn of the 20th century in America saw towering figures who personified this fusion of technology and business acumen. They started with their hands on the levers of industry and ended up with their names engraved in history.
Andrew Carnegie – the Man of Steel:
A Scottish immigrant of modest means, Carnegie became a giant of industry by betting on steel. In the 1870s and 1880s, steel was the miracle metal – stronger than iron but once prohibitively expensive to make. Carnegie embraced the new Bessemer process (developed in England in 1857) which allowed steel to be mass-produced cheaply.
The results were staggering: U.S. steel output soared from a mere 13 thousand tons in 1860 to over 1.4 million tons by 1880, and then to 11 million tons by 1900. Rails made of durable steel crisscrossed the continent, skyscrapers of steel skeletons began piercing city skylines, and American industry flexed its muscle. Carnegie’s mills, fueled by relentless innovation and ruthlessly efficient practices, produced steel faster and cheaper than anyone else.
By the 1890s, Carnegie Steel was the largest steel company in the world, and America had surpassed Britain as the globe’s top steel producer. Carnegie’s story – from poor bobbin boy to steel baron – captured the imagination of a nation. He preached a “Gospel of Wealth,” believing the rich had a duty to use their wealth for the public good, even as his competitive fire drove the steel industry to new heights.
John D. Rockefeller – the Oil Standard:
Where Carnegie tamed steel, Rockefeller conquered oil. In the late 1800s, crude oil was the new black gold, refined into kerosene to light lamps in homes and later into gasoline for horseless carriages. Rockefeller, a shrewd Ohio bookkeeper turned oil magnate, had a simple but revolutionary idea: standardize and streamline the oil business from the ground up.
His company, Standard Oil, formed in 1870, swiftly set about controlling every aspect of oil refining and distribution. He bought up or squeezed out smaller refineries, negotiated secret rebates with railroads for bulk shipments, built his own network of pipelines and tanker cars, and even manufactured his own barrels to cut costs.
By 1880, Standard Oil commanded about 90% of the U.S. oil refining market – an astonishing monopoly. Crucially, Rockefeller’s ruthless efficiency benefited consumers: the price of lamp kerosene plummeted from about $0.26 a gallon in 1870 to just $0.09 by 1880, making light affordable to the masses. He ensured that kerosene was safe and uniform in quality, reducing the horrendous lamp explosions that were once common.
Under Rockefeller’s meticulous direction, oil became a national industry and an everyday necessity. Standard Oil grew so powerful that the U.S. government later intervened, breaking it up in 1911 under new antitrust laws – laws essentially written because of Rockefeller’s dominance. But by then, the age of illuminated nights and gasoline-driven motion owed a great debt to Rockefeller’s vision of an “oil standard” for America.
J.P. Morgan – the Master Financier:
If Carnegie and Rockefeller forged empires in steel and oil, John Pierpont Morgan wielded power in the invisible realm of finance and strategy. The son of a banker, Morgan had an uncanny ability to spot value and bring order to chaos in the booming but volatile industrial economy.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries – the Gilded Age – he became the ultimate fixer and consolidator. Morgan spearheaded the formation of colossal corporations by merging competitors to eliminate wasteful competition. It was Morgan who, in 1901, bought out Carnegie’s steel operation and combined it with others to form U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.
He similarly helped create General Electric (by merging Edison’s electric company with a rival) and International Harvester, and at one point had controlling interests in over 20 different railroads. Morgan’s influence was so great that when a financial panic struck in 1907 and the stock market crashed, he personally organized a coalition of bankers and stepped in to rescue the U.S. financial system from collapse.
In a dramatic series of meetings at his New York mansion, Morgan directed capital to where it was needed most, effectively acting as a one-man central bank to halt the panic. This feat cemented his legend (and led to the creation of the Federal Reserve a few years later, so the country wouldn’t have to rely on a single tycoon’s generosity in the future).
Morgan cut a formidable figure – he was often photographed with a stern gaze and a piercing glare, symbolic of his will to bend markets to his command. His dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform American business from a rough-and-tumble frontier into a sophisticated, globally integrated economy. To many, Morgan was the ultimate captain of capitalism, proving that financial strategy could build (and save) industries just as iron or oil could.
These Gilded Age titans were sometimes called “robber barons” by critics – for their hard-nosed tactics and immense fortunes – but there’s no denying that they revolutionized the American economy. They laid railroads and pipelines across the land, built libraries and universities, and turned the United States into the world’s leading industrial nation. They demonstrated that with the right vision, one could literally reshape a country’s destiny.
Their mastery was not of hammers or plows, but of systems, supply chains, and capital – a new kind of toolset for a new age.
Second-Wave Innovators: Walmart, IKEA, Microsoft, Oracle
History doesn’t stop with one wave of innovation. As the 20th century rolled on, new frontiers of business opened, and a second generation of innovators rose to conquer them.
These entrepreneurs weren’t building railroads or refineries; they were reinventing retail and pioneering the computing revolution. Each in their own way expanded the idea of what an enterprise could achieve, often starting from humble origins and scaling to unimaginable heights.
Sam Walton – Revolutionizing Retail:
In 1962, in the small town of Rogers, Arkansas, Sam Walton opened a five-and-dime store with an unassuming name: Walmart. No one could have guessed it was the seed of what would become the world’s largest retail empire. Walton’s genius was to bring big discounts to small towns.
At a time when major discount chains focused on large cities, Walton gambled on rural areas that others ignored. He believed that by offering rock-bottom prices and friendly service in underserved communities, volume would make up for the thin profit on each item. To make this model work, Walton turned retailing into a logistics science.
He built a web of regional warehouses and positioned stores so that each was within a day’s drive of a distribution center. Walmart’s own truck fleet would ferry goods quickly and cheaply, keeping shelves stocked. “People think we got big by putting big stores in small towns,” Walton once said. “Really, we got big by replacing inventory with information,” using data and supply chain efficiencies to cut costs.
And big he got – by 1977 Walmart had 190 stores, and by 1985 over 800 stores, blanketing the country. Eventually Walmart would become the largest company on Earth by revenue, but it all started with Walton’s simple, home-spun vision of serving the customer better.
He was often seen roaming his stores or driving his old pickup truck to check on operations – a far cry from the gilded mansions of the Morgans and Rockefellers, yet his impact on American daily life (how and where we all shop) was just as profound.
Ingvar Kamprad – Democratizing Design:
Around the same time Walton was driving between Arkansas towns, a young Swede named Ingvar Kamprad was pondering how to sell furniture to the masses. In 1943, at just 17 years old, Kamprad founded IKEA (using his initials and his farm’s name). For the first decade it was a mail-order business selling small goods like pens – nothing extraordinary.
But in 1956, Kamprad hit on a revolutionary idea that would upend the furniture industry: flat-packaging. The story goes that he watched an employee remove the legs from a table to fit it into a customer’s car, and a lightbulb went off.
Why not design furniture from the start to be disassembled, packed flat in a box, and easily shipped?
This one innovation meant huge savings in transportation and storage, which Kamprad passed on as lower prices. Suddenly, stylish home furnishings were not just for the rich – they became affordable to young families and college students. IKEA’s self-assembled bookcases and sofas became a global phenomenon, and its gigantic warehouse-like stores a destination unto themselves. Kamprad, thrifty by nature, instilled a culture of cost-conscious innovation at IKEA. “Wasting resources is a mortal sin,” he wrote in his 1976 manifesto, preaching simplicity.
By sticking to that ethos, he built one of the largest private companies in the world. Today, IKEA’s annual catalog is reportedly read more than the Bible, and its more than 400 stores across dozens of countries sell $40+ billion in goods per year. Not bad for a farm boy from Småland who believed good design could be flat-packed and democratized.
Bill Gates – Personal Computing Pioneer:
As the industrial and retail titans forged ahead, the next frontier emerged in the form of silicon chips and software. In 1975, a young Harvard dropout named Bill Gates co-founded a little startup called Microsoft, with a bold mission: put a computer on every desk and in every home.
At a time when computers were giant machines locked away in labs and corporate backrooms, Gates’s vision sounded audacious – even crazy. Early personal computers were hobbyist curiosities, but Gates was convinced that user-friendly software could unlock their potential for ordinary people.
He and co-founder Paul Allen started by writing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair (an early DIY computer kit). Their big break came when IBM, the king of mainframes, asked Microsoft to provide the operating system for its entry into personal computers. Microsoft supplied MS-DOS, and later the graphical Windows operating system, which became ubiquitous on PCs around the world.
By the 1990s, if you turned on a personal computer, chances were it was running Microsoft software. Gates’s youthful proclamation – “a computer on every desk and in every home” – had largely come true. Under his leadership, Microsoft didn’t invent the PC or even many of the early GUI ideas, but it did standardize the software platform that allowed computing to go mainstream.
This standardization unleashed a revolution in how we work, communicate, and play – from spreadsheets and word processors to the early web. Gates became for the Information Age what Carnegie had been for the Steel Age: the richest man of his time, and a symbol that we had entered a new era where brainpower truly trumped brute force.
Not content with changing the world once, he later shifted his focus to philanthropy, aiming to tackle global health and education – but that is another chapter. The key is that Gates showed how software (the invisible code controlling those silicon chips) could become one of the most impactful tools in human history, empowering billions of people.
Larry Ellison – Data and Enterprise:
In the shadows of the personal computing boom, another quieter revolution was happening: the rise of enterprise software and databases that would underpin modern businesses. Larry Ellison, a brash programmer with big ambitions, co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with just a few thousand dollars and a vision to commercialize a new type of data management system.
At the time, IBM’s researchers had theorized the “relational database,” a way to store and query data efficiently, but IBM was slow to turn it into a product. Ellison seized the opportunity. Oracle (originally named Software Development Laboratories) developed the first commercially viable relational database system, which allowed companies to organize their burgeoning troves of information – from customer records to inventory – with unprecedented speed and flexibility.
Under Ellison’s relentless drive, Oracle grew from a three-person startup into the world’s largest database software supplier and a powerhouse in enterprise applications. If you’ve ever withdrawn cash from a bank, booked an airline ticket, or had a doctor look up your medical history, chances are an Oracle database was behind the scenes making it possible.
Ellison was known for his aggressive business tactics – he famously once said, “It’s not enough that we win; all others must lose.” He took on giants like IBM and outmaneuvered them, and later in the 2000s went on an acquisition spree to bring other software companies (PeopleSoft, Sun Microsystems, etc.) under Oracle’s umbrella. By 2025,
Ellison had become one of the richest people in the world, and Oracle’s software ran in millions of data centers. His story illustrates how information became the new lifeblood of the economy – and how organizing and leveraging that information became a business as critical as steel or oil. In a way, Larry Ellison did for data what Rockefeller did for oil: he refined it, distributed it, and made it a standard resource that every modern enterprise needs to survive.
Each of these second-wave innovators built on the legacy of those before – using tools and systems (whether logistical networks, flat-pack designs, operating systems, or databases) to extend human capability. They also proved that innovation is an ongoing journey.
Just as the pioneers of industry didn’t stop after perfecting steam power or electricity, the pioneers of the late 20th century kept pushing into the realms of global retail and digital technology. And their successes paved the way for the next chapter of the human story – one that is unfolding right now.
The New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence
We now stand on the cusp of another revolutionary age – one defined not by natural tools or mechanical machines, but by the power of artificial intelligence. If earlier eras extended the reach of our hands and then our minds, this one has the potential to amplify our intellect beyond anything we’ve experienced before.
AI – machines that can learn, reason, and even create – is rapidly becoming the most impactful tool of the modern entrepreneur.
Experts often say that “AI is the new electricity.” Just as electrification transformed industry after industry a century ago, AI is poised to reshape every sector of the economy today.
Already, AI systems are diagnosing diseases from medical scans, driving cars, conversing in natural language, and optimizing supply chains. Crucially for business leaders, AI can sift through oceans of data to find patterns and solutions that no human could spot, enabling smarter decisions and new products.
In essence, it’s a force multiplier for human intelligence – much like early tools multiplied human strength. Entrepreneurs must harness this power as surely as Carnegie harnessed steel or Gates harnessed software.
Those who learn to leverage AI – to improve efficiency, personalize customer experiences, predict trends, and innovate faster – will lead the pack in the coming decades. We are already seeing it: companies that integrate AI into their operations are outperforming those that don’t.
A recent Bain & Co. report put it bluntly: businesses that delay adopting AI are “at risk of being left behind”, as forward-thinking competitors race ahead and capture the benefits. The gap between AI adopters and laggards isn’t trivial – it can be the difference between thriving and perishing in the marketplace.
As Coca-Cola’s CEO quipped in reference to the AI wave, “If you stand still, you’re going to fall behind”.
But beyond competitive edge, there’s a broader evolutionary narrative here. From the first stone axe to the latest algorithm, our species has survived and prospered by embracing new tools. AI represents a tool unlike any we’ve created before – one that can mimic cognitive abilities. It challenges us to redefine what work and creativity mean when a machine can converse fluently or generate a design.
Some tasks that once required years of human experience might be handled in seconds by an AI; conversely, new human skills and jobs will emerge (as they always have) alongside the new technology. There are certainly risks and ethical dilemmas: misuse of AI, job displacement, even questions of AI making decisions we don’t fully understand.
Just as society had to rein in monopolies and ensure electricity was used for good, we will have to guide AI’s development responsibly. Yet the lesson of history is that turning away from innovation is not an option – the tide of progress will not wait.
The key is to participate and shape it.
Conclusion: Evolve or Be Left Behind
The journey from prehistoric toolmakers to modern technologists has been anything but smooth – it’s a tale of bold risks, triumphant breakthroughs, and occasional disastrous failures.
What sets the winners apart is their willingness to embrace the future.
At each stage, those who clung to older ways while the world changed around them were left in the dust. Imagine a master craftsman in the 1800s stubbornly refusing to use machine tools, or a retailer in the 2000s dismissing the internet – their fates were sealed by their refusal to evolve.
The same is true today. Artificial intelligence is our new frontier, and it demands the same bold spirit that drove every prior leap of progress.
For modern innovators and entrepreneurs, the call to action is clear: adapt, adopt, and advance. The weapons and plows of old allowed humans to survive; the steel mills and railroads built nations; the code and circuits of the digital age connected us all.
Now, AI stands ready to augment our abilities further. It won’t replace the need for human vision and leadership – if anything, it amplifies the importance of those qualities. After all, it took human insight to wield each historical tool effectively, whether chipping a flint or programming a computer.
So equip yourself with knowledge about AI, experiment with its possibilities, and consider how it can elevate your business or mission. Be proactive: invest in talent and training, encourage a culture that fuses human creativity with AI’s capabilities, and remain agile as the technology evolves.
The evolutionary arc we’ve traced – from hands to mind to machine to artificial mind – shows that every era is built on the foundations of the last. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Walton, and Gates, but also of the countless unnamed innovators who chipped the first stone or planted the first seed.
Now it’s our turn to build the future. In this dramatic saga of human progress, complacency is the only real enemy. The tools have changed, but the challenge remains the same: to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
So take up the torch – or rather, the data and algorithms – and forge the next chapter. Just as fire, iron, and electricity empowered those before us, let artificial intelligence be the force that empowers you to create, to solve, and to inspire.
The future will belong to those who have the courage to shape it.
Innovators, the message is simple: evolve or be left behind. The hands of history are turning the page – make sure you are the one holding the pen for the next great chapter ✌️
Justin Hubbard
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