Technological change: A microeconomic approach to the creation of knowledge

Technological change does not evolve in a purely normative economic way. Economic selection has a guiding impact on technology evolution, but the generic element of novelty does not necessarily follow economic utility. In general, market selection is predominant in economic thinking and it is also implicit in the literature on technological change. Using a microeconomic approach to the creation of knowledge, this paper shows that the generic (Schumpeterian) element of the emergence of novelty – economic selection being absent – may create structures, paradigms and trajectories, which we usually look at from a market selection perspective. This paper does not try to make predictions on trajectories, but it qualifies a standard evolutionary perspective.