Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: Investment in innovation in industrialized economies increasingly is taken over by large firms that operate their own R&D divisions and transform technological change into a routine bureaucratized process. Powerful competitive forces require firms to do this for survival. But such routinized innovation has not replaced the individual independent innovator, the traditional source of technical change. The latter have tended to provide the more revolutionary breakthroughs, to which corporate research has added reliability, enhanced power and ease of utilization. Thus, both make a vital contribution to growth. While the results of big business research are often less spectacular, they have typically added up to very substantial improvements.
Author: William J. Baumol
Language: English
Topic: Firm Innovation and Growth
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2148280099