The buzz around Facebook’s upcoming IPO has reached a fever pitch, and many entrepreneurs have Mark Zuckerberg envy. But however impressive Facebook’s business is, we must not confuse it with “innovation.” Too often, Facebook is cited as an example of America’s innovation, but Facebook is not the first social media site to exist. Before it was Friendster, MySpace, and many others that didn’t have the marketing savvy to give them staying power. If anything, Facebook is the poster boy for America’s supreme marketing savvy, not innovation. In my opinion, innovation is nearly dead, a sentiment that I share with a former classmate of mine named Peter Thiel. Perhaps some people take issue with that claim, but when I speak of innovation, I’m talking about the disruptive technological changes that really alter lives such as the use of electricity or the invention of the airplane. When I thumbed through the book “1001 Inventions that Changed the World,” the inventions listed in the last few decades were probably the least disruptive of the lot. I explain in greater detail in my book why I believe this is the case and offer some ideas for how to remedy it.