How Ideas become Objects. How Objects cause Economic Growth.

The Economics of Ideas

How ideas cause economic growth requires a rigorous definition of innovation that sifts many ideas through a funnel from which objects emerge on a commercially successful economic path to GDP that's within a National Accounting framework. This purposeful origin should constitute Growth Economics, but it doesn't. Growth Economics is held back by a vested interest best described as 'think like us'. 'Think like us' is exemplified by the conjecture known as 'Total Factor Productivity', which is so deeply faulted that decades of multiple tweaks have not rescued it. Therefore 'The Economics of Ideas' must start from genuinely new thinking. That thinking comes from tacit knowledge known only to those who practice from it. It is hidden from campus view by distance and by commercial rules of non-disclosure. Academic freedoms to publish and teach do not apply to its unique potency, which is fueled by data on actualities not otherwise available for analysis by outsiders. It turns out that Economic orthodoxy does not work on this data. Without fanfare, and since 1964, commercially motivated innovation professionals have sought an alternative understanding. This has now been spectacularly achieved, as follows, Growth obeys four previously undiscovered scientific laws whose very simple algebra has been hiding in 'plain sight' for decades. These game changers came into the public domain from the volume Innovation in Economics: Missing Pieces in 2018. Economics needs Science provides key foundational 'plain sight' missed by economists, while Academic Questions with Author Responses goes further by letting classic campus deliberations meet the authenticity of actual practice in detail. The outcome is a path to economic growth that is governed from beginning to end by four scientifically sound laws. These include three innovation productivities whose enhancement steered by policy can enhance the economic prosperity of all people.