Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/241302 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity [ISSN:] 2199-8531 [Volume:] 5 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2019 [Pages:] 1-17
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
Western economies nowadays are confronted with a predicted productivity slowdown resulting in diminishing rates of economic growth. While some scholars see these developments as an indication of the approaching end of growth due to fully exploited technological opportunities, this article contends that the possibilities for radical, paradigm changing innovations are far from being exploited. Building on contributions from Schumpeter and Georgescu-Roegen, we argue that the human capacity to expand technological and intellectual frontiers must not be underestimated. In a selective retrospect, our narrative identifies and describes four historical incidents reflecting different perceptions of the power of the human mind. It synthesizes the mentioned economists' viewpoints with the effects of these incidents to reproduce the intellectual roots of the recently developed concept of Dedicated Innovation Systems (DIS). We conclude that traditional macro-level indicators are not suitable to capture transformation processes, which is why we propose to interpret growth indicators and the alleged productivity slowdown quite differently. We argue that human ingenuity and transformation processes dedicated to sustainability will open up new opportunity spaces, thereby combining an increase in economic welfare and social justice with a reduction of negative environmental impact
Subjects: 
economic growth
economic development
Schumpeter
Georgescu-Roegen
productivity slowdown
knowledge
human ingenuity
transformation
qualitative change
Dedicated Innovation System (DIS)
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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