A friend asked me yesterday what I thought would be the lasting inventions of our generation – what would bump something like the Alphabet off of the to 50 greatest breakthroughs of all time?  I was surprised that what came to mind for me were brands more than products.  Google, Facebook, Twitter, even Apple, invented in the 70s, was reinvented in the 2000s.  I wonder if that’s a growing trend – that brands themselves are the innovation, and the products they spin out are cloaked in the mystic of the brand in ways that make them indistinguishable.  We won’t know for another 50 years or so, but it will be interesting to see what happens then!