Innovation in the times of quality growth

There is much talk about China's capabilities to innovate, its innovation policy and the growth that can be expected to result: What kind of growth and how much of it?

People have an innate desire to create, which can be traced as far back as prehistoric Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals before them. Innovation, however, means adoption alongside creation. And adoption takes place only when the new thing is seen to be profitable to use - more profitable than choosing any other new thing. So innovating is hard and success may be infrequent, to say the least.

Yet careers that invite efforts at innovating are highly valued. During the United States' glorious years from the 1820s to the 1960s, innovation was pursued by ordinary people as well as geniuses. Abraham Lincoln exclaimed in 1858: "Young America has a great passion - a perfect rage - for the new." This innovating was an engaging and often exhilarating experience: people were involved in their work and had a sense of taking action and of achieving things. Now, statistical analyses show that a low rate of innovation in a country is a reliable predictor of low life satisfaction.