“Hybrid corn was the invention of a method of inventing, a method of breeding superior corn for specific localities. It was not a single invention immediately adaptable everywhere. The actual breeding of adaptable hybrids had to be done separately for each area.”

From Zvi Griliches, “Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change”

Hybridization as a technology, not a single strain as a technological artifact. With this reconceptualization, the great innovation of the Green Revolution wasn’t the delivery of new technological artifacts — certain strains of hybrid corn — but the delivery of hybridization — A TECHNIQUE DEVELOPED IN MEXICO OVER THE COURSE OF MILLENNIA TO CREATE WHAT WE KNOW TO BE CORN IN THE FIRST PLACE.