ABSTRACT
Science and invention represent forms of investment within a society. In trying to get the connections among science, invention, and innovation, it may be useful to begin with some formal and abstract propositions. The purpose of viewing science and invention in the static supply and demand terms is extremely limited. Automatic linkage of science and invention is precisely what cannot be assumed in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In eighteenth-century Britain, in cotton textiles, iron, and steam engine-and in agriculture, chemistry, and transport as well-is both a sustained inventive response to profit possibilities and a corps of entrepreneurs willing to take the risks of innovation. The relative shortage of labour which affected English industry seems to have been one of the most powerful incentives to innovation, not only in the cotton industry but in several others. Invention and innovation at any period of time are marginal activities in a society.
