However, by their nature, they show up most clear in production in the productive equipment that is relied on most heavily in that wave of innovations. So, for the great surge in steam power, the number of fixed steam engines and locomotives tells the tale of the boom and tailing off ... but it doesn't say anything about the establishment of the crude oil productive system.
In historical research, this is fine ... we can identify what the equipment that had the strongest complementarity with the balance of the innovation wave, and trace out the surge in investment in that equipment.
For an indicator, of course, that would be like looking for a recession in the aggregate GDP data ... we are reasonably confident about the GDP data for Quarter 1 by the end of Quarter 2, and so can be confident that we were in a recession on the definition of two consecutive quarters of reduction in GDP, by the end of Quarter 3. And by the end of Quarter 3, most of the GDP recessions that we have experienced since the end of WWII would be over, with the economy starting to grow again.
Mind you, any wave of investment in productive equipment associated with a new technology is part of a wave of innovation ... that's what innovation is, putting a new technology to use. However, whether its the next wave along the existing technological channel, or breaking ground for a new technological channel ... that's far easier to see in retrospect.
There is much of this in the literature on Kondratieff cycles, but much of that is focused on the question of whether these cycles have a regular periodicity ... his theory was that capitalist economies have a long cycle of about 50-60 years.
In this context, there are two steps between the general observation of the cyclic character of economic innovations and Kondratieff theory as such ... the first is whether Kondratieff was correct, and the second is whether the cycle would remain substantially the same given the massive institutional change that we must proceed with in order to achieve an ecological sustainable economic system. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Or the surge in investment in renewable energy technology that is underway? (e.g., wind: Jerome or Crazy Horse could provide figures for this one) We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Lots of waves of innovation are billed as the next really, really big deal. Far fewer are. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Looking at it from the paradigm of self-organised criticality, in other words. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
(I also expect that they would have different ones, each one backing up the position that they are taking on some specific point of contention.)
Its been about eight years since I last looked at the Long Wave theory literature ... more recently I have been more interested in the lower level stuff, in the business literature on entrepreneurship. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
