Why was Adam Smith important to the industrial revolution??

Adam Smith was important to the Industrial Revolution
because he was the most important thinker behind the idea of laissez-faire economics. 
In other words, he wanted the government to stop trying to tell businesses what to do. 
Instead, he wanted the "invisible hand" of competition and consumer choice to tell
businesses what to do.

Smith was also an advocate of the
idea of division of labor.  In a system with division of labor, each worker does only
one task or a few tasks in the process of making a larger thing.  Instead of having one
worker make a whole shoe, for example, you have one worker just cut out the pieces all
day long.  Or you have one just sew the tongues on the shoes.  This means that the
person only has to master one skill and things can be done more
efficiently.

These two ideas were both very important for
the Industrial Revolution.  The first of them encouraged governments to let businesses
do what they wanted instead of telling them what to do.  The second helped businesses
understand the best way to get more efficiency out of their
workers.