Innovation, not just technological, is the philosopher's stone of prosperity.

Abstract

Economic and social progress has to do with people's standard of living and quality of life. Since it can be described, measured, and compared in historical time and space, we can venture to interpret the keys that determine it.

Until not long ago, in the mid-1940s, the factors that made possible the economic growth that generated the progress of nations were unknown with academic rigor. The great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, with his theory of "creative destruction," had already anticipated the importance of technological innovation in the sustainability of wealth growth. A little later, Robert Solow—Nobel Prize winner, 1987—discovered and quantified the determining role of technological change in economic progress, quantifying it at 85%.

Since then, technological innovation has become very fashionable, more recently incorporating the institutional framework—social and political—that enables it, according to Douglass North—Nobel Prize winner, 1993.

Starting from the great human gift of creativity, analyzing the cultural and institutional environments that enable its development, discussing the dialogue between technology and science, describing the workings of innovation and also its much-disguised yet abundant enemies, the article concludes that human progress ultimately comes about thanks to the unhindered freedom of human entrepreneurship.

When entrepreneurs are free from obstacles to invention and innovation, the miracle of geometric progress in human living conditions occurs, and even—contrary to the prophets of doom—the expansion of the supply of limited resources.