Commercial Knowledge Leads to New Economics

Business Innovation Economics

It’s apparent to most thinkers that innovation should connect with economic growth. But Economics doesn't help them much. It defaults to a proxy called Factor Productivity whose sufficiency remains unproven. And to a contribution toward intellectual capital, or intangible stock, from which future technology and products may be developed, but without enumerating when or how. For reasons conjectured next, Economics has completely missed an industry standard, the Innovation Funnel, which controls output to commercialization. The mechanism for successful passage through this funnel is an essential consideration on which Economics remains silent; a hidden consequence of what the perceptive economist Zvi Griliches once called 'data constraint'. Indeed, the right business data is systemically out of academic reach. It’s hidden away from campuses, in commercial reports; within factories, corporate offices and technical centers. And most of it relates to successful funnel passage. But tacit knowledge, and access, allow Innovation Professionals to use these resources to serve various commercial purposes, into which the incorporation of Economics is a natural extension. The outcome fills two well-known, but almost forgotten, knowledge gaps in Economics. These are the long sought, but never found, numerical link between current R&D and future GDP, and a host of issues that arise unless quality can be separately enumerated; a deficit known as the quality change problem,

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