Ctw 1 draft
9/16/2014
One key ingredient of innovation that is the very spark of growth, whether economic or otherwise, is competition. Lying dormant in individuals worldwide is a competitive edge that, if they choose to act upon, can lead to almost immediate success. This of course, still depends on the gravity of the progression. As previously stated these competitors’ innovations can be seen encouraging individual level growth, however this does not exclude: regional, national, and even enterprise growth. Using the Solow Model, technology can be seen increasing or augmenting the labor’s effectiveness (N. Gregory Mankiw, 264). This makes sense if one were to simply consider certain “older” innovations. For instance, Ford’s assembly line increased each individual worker’s productivity by splitting up responsibilities to whoever could deliver the best performance of a task per certain aspect of the manufacturing process. Even though some claim that overspecialization breeds weakness (Ghost in the Shell), a complete lack of specialization is probably way worse. In other words, if there are no changes in technology (or rather labor effectiveness a.k.a. E) the only real means of increasing output is just simply increasing capital, which shortly becomes ineffective once Solow’s stable state is exceeded. Something else to consider would be the fact that innovation does not simply take place in the construction of tangible goods, but it also emerges as things like methodological breakthroughs. This type of innovation is the kind that really everyone benefits from. Take for instance the new plan that Amazon is considering involving drone delivery: Then Bezos played a Prime Air demo video for the 60 Minutes team that showed how his octocopters will pick up packages in small yellow buckets at Amazon’s fulfillment centers and whiz through the air to deliver items to individual customers 30 minutes after they hit the “buy”