Science and Innovation: A Cyclical Approach

To formally understand cyclicity in innovation and to tie to Schumpeter’s idea about waves of creative destruction, we elaborate upon Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) hypothesis that science evolves through a succession of paradigm life cycles by noting that entrepreneurs recognize the profitability of new scientific theories through a delay. The delay from innovation to entrepreneurship may be due to technological inertia, the time taken in recognizing the applications of basic research, or related to how quickly technological change evolves over time and its returns are realized. In our model, a profit-maximizing entrepreneur uses the latest scientific knowledge to create innovative technologies, which generates cycles between science and innovation. The necessary conditions for the existence of cycles are that human capital employed in science creation and high valued innovations is high, and the interest rate is low. The findings also tie to the notion about the variability of innovation over the business cycle and can provide useful inputs into the formulation of more effective technology policies.