ABSTRACT
Do major or basic innovations appear in swarms, as Schumpeter and his followers have suggested, or are they evenly distributed over time? Is the propensity to innovate higher under certain macroeconomic conditions than under others? To determine the dynamic pattern of major innovations, a list of such innovations would first have to be drawn up. This is easier said than done. The problems of listing and dating major innovations are well-known.
Innovations are heterogeneous in character. There are product innovations and process innovations; there are innovations in old industries and innovations that have established new industries. Adding all these for certain time-periods would amount to adding up apples and pears.
Innovations are heterogeneous in area of application. For instance, product innovations may be consumer goods, or producer goods, or sometimes both. Consumers may consider the innovation of the vacuum cleaner as very basic, but have no notion of the significance of the innovation of the gyro-compass.
Innovations are heterogeneous in impact. The development of the motor car spawned a major industry; the impact of the zip fastener was much smaller. Yet each would count as only one innovation.
Seminal innovations versus subsequent improvements. Should only Bessemer steel – the beginning of the modern steel industry – be listed or also subsequent improvements in the steel industry? Or, to take another example, should only the original transistor of Shockley et. al. be mentioned, or also its successors such as the silicon and the planar transistor?
Competing technologies. The introductory phases of some industry life cycles have been characterized by the co-existence of and competition between different technologies. Examples are the cylindrical record and the flat disc (the flat disc won); the internal combustion engine-driven motor car versus the electric car (the first won); and, more recently, the three different video-cassette recorder systems (VHS, Betamax and Philips) and the three videodisc systems (Philips, RCA and the Japanese). Should all be mentioned, or only that which survives?
Innovation versus invention. The moment of innovation is the moment of market introduction of the new product or process. For most 20th century innovations the timing and the name of the innovator(s) are fairly well recorded. With most early 19th century innovations this is not the case. Often only the name of the inventor is known, and assumptions have to be made about the rapidity of application of an invention.
Recent innovations. The success of an innovation, and therefore its ‘basic’ character, can only be assessed after some time has passed, usually at least a decade. This implies that lists necessarily get thinner towards the date of compilation. Drop-offs in numbers of basic innovations thus do not necessarily mean reduced innovativeness. DNA-recombinant analysis, fibre optics, holography, the compact disc and kevlar may well appear on future lists, but not on the present ones. And how should recent developments in microelectronics be assessed? Should the hand-held portable calculator and the home computer be seen as basic innovations?
Innovations past and present. In retrospect, some of the older innovations may not seem as important as they once were. We may include the arc lamp on our list as the predecessor of the incandescent lamp, but other innovations are likely to be omitted which at one time might have been considered large leaps forward. In that sense, our current perspective could well lead to an under-representation of innovations before, say, 1870.
