Creativity, Corporatism and Crowds

Inventors and inventions drive economic growth, and it’s not just the titans like Thomas Edison who created new industries by filing hundreds of patents for products like the phonograph, the movie camera, an incandescent light bulb. By experimenting and comparing results, workers at different levels can streamline operations or create new products. Many inventions emerge at the workplace, but the loners working on revolutionary projects often capture the most attention. In an essay for Project Syndicate, Nobel laureate and Yale professor Robert Shiller urges tackling unemployment and under-employment, suggesting that stimulus spending, education and political courage are all needed to boost innovation. He reviews writings on “corporatism” and compares corporate methods to chaotic crowd funding based on popular appeal. “Ultimately, we need economic institutions that somehow promote the concerted creative actions of a wide swath of world’s people,” Shiller concludes. Innovation can be disruptive, he reminds, and new forms of economic organization should not neglect fairness. – YaleGlobal

Creativity, Corporatism and Crowds

Economic growth relies on creativity and that should be encouraged in multiple ways and settings – factory floors, small business and do-it-yourselfers
Robert J. Shiller
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Click here for the article in Project Syndicate.




Robert J. Shiller, a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at Yale University and the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index of US house prices. He is the author of Irrational Exuberance, the third edition of which will be published in January 2015, and, most recently, Finance and the Good Society.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2014