Inventing Prosperity

Science, Technology, and the Future of American Innovation
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-782639-3
Verlag: Oxford University Press Inc

Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 246 mm x 166 mm, Gewicht: 720 g

A clear-eyed, data-driven guide to reignite America's innovation engine and turn breakthrough science into broad-based prosperity.

America's innovation advantage has historically rested on a balanced division of innovative labor among corporate labs, universities, startups, and government. In the mid-twentieth century, famed corporate laboratories--Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, DuPont Central Research--combined discovery and development under one roof, turning frontier science into world-changing innovations. Today, many of these labs have closed, downsized, or redirected toward more short-term applications, while universities and startups have taken their stead.

Inventing Prosperity explains how these structural shifts have affected the American innovation engine. In fields such as the life sciences, a deeper division of labor has accelerated discovery and commercialization by fostering specialization. In nanotechnology, new materials, and other "deep-tech" sectors, however, the results have been more disappointing. Drawing on a wealth of data linking patents, scientific papers, venture activity, and firm performance, the authors show that the chief bottleneck is not a shortage of breakthrough science or funding but a structural mismatch. Fixing this mismatch requires strengthening the connective tissue among the ecosystem's actors.

Blending economic history, case studies, and fresh policy analysis, this book provides a clear-eyed, data-driven guide to reigniting America's innovation. It calls for rebuilding translational capacity inside firms, forging smarter public-private partnerships, broadening innovation policy to include smart procurement, and experimenting with new types of research organizations, so that ideas can cross institutional borders at speed. In doing so, Inventing Prosperity shows how to convert twenty-first-century breakthroughs into broad-based growth.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Arora, Ashish

Belenzon, Sharon

Patacconi, Andrea

Suh, Jungkyu

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface

- 1. Inventing Prosperity

- 2. The American Innovation Ecosystem

- 3. Division of Innovative Labor and the Deep-Tech Innovation Gap

- 4. America's Evolving Innovation Ecosystem: What We've Lost and Why It Matters

- 5. The Rise of Science-Based Innovation

- 6. Smithian and Schumpeterian Models of Translation: Commercializing Inventions in the First and Second Industrial Revolutions

- 7. The Origins of the American Scientific Industrial Complex

- 8. The Rise of Industrial Research In America

- 9. Science Becomes a National Priority

- 10. The Golden Age of Industrial Research

- 11. The Decline of Industrial Research

- 12. Filling the Void: Entrepreneurial Academics and Science-Based Startups

- 13. The Role of the Government as a Buyer of Innovation

- 14 What Is To Be Done: Rethinking Innovation Policy

- 15. Concluding Thoughts

- Acknowledgments

- Notes

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ashish Arora is the Rex D. Adams Professor of Business Administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and a Research Associate in the Productivity Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Sharon Belenzon is the Fundación Damm Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Andrea Patacconi is a Professor of Strategy at the University of East Anglia's Norwich Business School.

Jungkyu Suh is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at New York University's Stern School of Business.