The Birth and Death of Technology Hotspots
Andrew Torrance |
TEDxQueensU
• January 2020
Dr. Andrew W. Torrance reveals the power of innovation hypercycles to drive explosive technological progress. He explains how the generation of new ideas, practical applications of those ideas, welfare gains from these applications, and investment in talent complete a cycle by generating yet more ideas, while ideas, applications, welfare, and talent each form their own internal cycle of growth. This cycle of cycles possesses catalytic properties that generate an innovation hypercycle characterized by exponential progress in technology. Innovation hypercycles generate technology hotspots, are difficult to sustain, and are easy to shortcircuit. Dr. Torrance highlights the roles played by openmindedness, contestability, education, intellectual property, and regulation in fostering innovation hypercycles, and identifies examples of innovation hypercycles, such as the School of Alexandria, the Industrial Revolution, the Cavendish Laboratory, Silicon Valley, and the Broad Institute. A 1991 graduate of Queen’s University, Dr. Torrance is the Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.