An engaging, solutions-oriented look at how cities and nations can better foster innovation and equality.
From San Francisco to Shanghai, many of the world's most innovative places are highly unequal, with the benefits going to a small few. Rather than simply asking how we can create more high-tech cities and nations, Innovation for the Masses focuses on what we can learn from places that foster innovation while also delivering the benefits more widely and equally. In this book, economist Neil Lee draws on case studies of Taiwan, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland to set out how innovation can be successfully balanced toward equity.
As high-tech economies around the world suffer from polarized labor markets and political realities that lock in these problems, this book looks beyond the United States to other models of distributing a leading-edge economy. Lee emphasizes the active role of the state in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, revealing that strong policies for innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other. Ultimately, Innovation for the Masses provides a vital window into alternative models that prioritize equity, the roadblocks these models present, and what other countries can learn from them going forward.
ISBN-13: 9780520394889
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication Date: 01-09-2024
Pages: 248
Product Dimensions: 8.30h x 5.40w x 1.00d
Neil Lee is Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Why Innovation Matters
1. The Economics of Innovation
2. Innovation and Living Standards
3. Switzerland: The Diffusion of Innovation
4. Austria: Innovating from Irrelevance
5. Taiwan: The Race between Education and Technological Development
6. Sweden: Disruption and the (Welfare) State
Conclusion: Innovation and Shared Prosperity
Notes
References
Index
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