Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Theory of the entrepreneurial firm
- 2 Who are the entrepreneurs? (or, don't confuse brains with a bull market)
- 3 Competition – the leapfrogging game
- 4 Advertising, memory, and custom
- 5 Inventions and innovations in business and science
- 6 Origins of state-owned enterprises
- 7 Restoring the wealth of nations
- Appendixes
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
7 - Restoring the wealth of nations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Theory of the entrepreneurial firm
- 2 Who are the entrepreneurs? (or, don't confuse brains with a bull market)
- 3 Competition – the leapfrogging game
- 4 Advertising, memory, and custom
- 5 Inventions and innovations in business and science
- 6 Origins of state-owned enterprises
- 7 Restoring the wealth of nations
- Appendixes
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you'd generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Through the Looking-Glass Lewis E. CarrollInnovations and entrepreneurship have been some of the main subjects examined in the previous chapters, and, as pointed out in this concluding one, their promotion must be the focus of policies whose goal is to restore the wealth of nations.
One should not be surprised to learn that such policies, today called “industrial strategies” or “industrial policies,” have always been nationalistic in character and were advocated by some social scientists and politicians when their nation started falling behind. The sudden relative prosperity of others (achieved through innovations) was perceived as a threat by those outdone. And with good reasons: Those who lost ground by being undersold could choose between lowering aspirations (and thus reducing wages and standards of living) or maintain aspirations and then make greater efforts, become more productive and innovative.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- RivalryIn Business, Science, among Nations, pp. 146 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987