Traditional economics views growth as an aggregate phenomena and leaves the major driver of growth - the advancement of human knowledge - largely unexplained. INET Oxford, in collaboration with a number of scholars around the world, is leading several projects that are attempting to develop a bottom-up theory of growth that is empirically grounded and has a truly endogenous view of innovation. At the core of the work is the idea that the economy is a constantly evolving network of technologies that make possible networks of productive capabilities, that in turn enable the creation of products and services. It is the evolution of these networks, the search for new combinations of technologies, capabilities, and products in enormous combinatorial spaces of possibility, that drives economic growth. Our research is also examining the implications of this "bottom-up" view for policies for growth and innovation, as well as implications for inequality and sustainability.
