Innovative Enterprise, Industrial Leadership, and Sustainable Prosperity

Abstract

This chapter provides a retrospective account of nearly five decades of historical and comparative research aimed at developing an economic theory that explains the shifts across nations in industrial leadership and addresses the policy challenges of developing and sustaining a successful and equitable economy. The initial research focused on the dynamics of the British cotton-textile industry, the global 19th-century leader that lost international competitiveness in the 20th century. The focus expanded to the social conditions that supported innovation across industries in Britain, the United States, and Japan in global competition in the 20th century, providing empirical foundations for the Social Conditions of Innovative Enterprise (SCIE) framework. In turn, this framework has permitted systematic research into the transition of many United States corporations from innovation to financialization, with implications for extreme economic inequality in the United States and the loss of US industrial leadership to China.