Book ID: CBB001201315

Mothers of Innovation: How Expanding Social Networks Gave Birth to the Industrial Revolution (2012)

unapi

Dudley, Leonard (Author)


Cambridge Scholars Publishing


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: xxi + 275 pp.; ill.; maps; bibl.; index
Language: English

What does it take for a society to be able to innovate? The question is crucial today when an increasing share of world patents is taken out by countries such as Japan, South Korea and China with limited energy resources and cultures very different from those in the West. However, most previous studies of the beginnings of industrialization have focused on the resources and institutions of Britain alone. As a result, they have missed the lessons to be learned from casting the net more widely so as to examine all regions of the North-Atlantic community. This book pinpoints the surprising differences between innovating and non-innovating regions. Protection of property rights, a practical ideology and abundant resources were not sufficient to spark accelerated innovation. The key to the Industrial Revolution, this study shows through case studies and rigorous verification, was the effect of expanding social networks on people's willingness to cooperate. Language standardization permitted the widening of circles of cooperation to encompass individuals with increasingly different sets of knowledge. The result was an unprecedented burst of what some linguists have called double-scope blending - the integration of hitherto unrelated concepts to create something new. These findings have important implications for corporate and government policy.

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Reviewed By

Review Martello, Robert (2014) Review of "Mothers of Innovation: How Expanding Social Networks Gave Birth to the Industrial Revolution". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (p. 385). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001201315/

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Authors & Contributors
Christina Holmes
Keck, Frédéric
Mathias Vigouroux
Frumer, Yulia
Antony, Robert J.
Wang, Hsien-Chun
Concepts
Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Transmission of ideas
Cross-national interaction
Industrial revolution
Industrialization
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
21st century
17th century
Edo period (Japan, 1603-1868)
20th century
Places
China
Japan
Europe
Latin America
Korea
Great Britain
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