Bringing Developing Country Innovation Into The Mainstream

摘要

Innovation is not a new phenomenon. The activity of thinking about new and better ways of doing things and testing them in practice is as old as human history, beginning with the invention of crude stone tools. Sustained innovation-based development is, however, a relatively recent and unevenly distributed historical phenomenon. Innovative activity initiated and has helped sustain the technological and economic dominance of a handful of economies, mainly in the West. A substantial body of literature addresses the rise of the West, and particularly the European breakthrough to sustained innovation-based productivity growth, in the late 18th century.