The Origin of Wealth

Evolution is an algorithm; it is an all-purpose formula for innovation, a formula that, through its special brand of trial and error, creates new designs and solves difficult problems.

During the 1970s, as scientists came to know more about the behaviors of complex systems, they became increasingly interested in systems in which the particles were not simple things with fixed behaviors like water molecules, but were things with some intelligence and the capability of adapting to their environment. Water molecules cannot adapt the

While economists were pursuing their vision of the economy as an equilibrium system, during the latter half of the twentieth century, physicists, chemists, and biologists became increasingly interested in systems that were far from equilibrium, that were dynamic and complex, and that never settled into a state of rest. Beginning in the 1970s, scien

A growing population will increase the total wealth of a society as the amount of available labor grows. But growing wealth on a per-person basis (thus raising individual standards of living) requires increasing productivity, and increasing productivity requires specialization.

Take a look out your window. No matter where you are, from the biggest industrialized city to the smallest rural village, you are surrounded by economic activity and its results. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the planet is abuzz with humans designing, organizing, manufacturing, servicing, transporting, communicating, buying, and selli

The Economy Evolves Modern science provides just such a theory. This book will argue that wealth creation is the product of a simple, but profoundly powerful, three-step formula—differentiate, select, and amplify—the formula of evolution. The same process that has driven the growing order and complexity of the biosphere has driven the growing order

Nelson notes that while Physical Technologies have clearly had an immense impact on society, the contributions of Social Technologies have been equally important and in fact, the two coevolve with each other.36 During the Industrial Revolution, for example, Richard Arkwright’s invention of the spinning frame (a Physical Technology) in the eighteent

Modern efforts to understand the economy as an evolutionary system avoid such metaphors and instead focus on understanding how the universal algorithm of evolution is literally and specifically implemented in the information-processing substrate of human economic activity. While both biological and economic systems share the core algorithm of evolu

Businesses are themselves a form of design. The design of a business encompasses its strategy, organizational structure, management processes, culture, and a host of other factors. Business designs evolve over time through a process of differentiation, selection, and amplification, with the market as the ultimate arbiter of fitness. One of the majo