Who first thought of putting wheels on suitcases and why did this seemingly obvious idea not take off until the 1990s? In the final episode of our series on how innovation works, we explore how the adoption of an idea can be hampered by social attitudes and prejudices. In the case of the wheeled...

Paying for things using your phone has become far more widespread during the pandemic. But Western consumers are playing catch-up. Mobile payments have been widespread for more than a decade in Africa, and in particular in Kenya, where the world’s first successful mobile-money system, called...

The notion of shipping things in standardised boxes seems obvious in retrospect, so why did shipping containers take so long to emerge? Host Tom Standage finds out how difficult it was for this simple idea to take off. He talks to shipping experts and economists about the container’s far-reaching...