Where Do Innovations Come From?

In the 1970s, there was a lively debate on both sides of the Atlantic about deep discontinuities in the development of advanced market societies. Much of this debate centered on the idea of postindustrial society—emphasizing a shift from goods to services and the rise of science-based production. A wide range of scholars argued that U.S. society, in particular, required significant institutional changes to take advantage of these new productive possibilities (Bell 1973; Brick 2006; Touraine 1971). Parallel arguments for discontinuity were made by theorists of fifty- to sixty-year economic long waves (Mandel 1980) and by contributors to regulation theory, who also argued that capitalist societies required new regulatory structures (Aglietta 1979). ¹ These arguments continued into the next decade, as reflected in the wide interest generated by Piore and Sabel's argument in the Second Industrial Divide (1984) for a fundamental shift in the organization of production.