Inventing Prosperity: Science, Technology, and the Future of American Innovation
The Gothenburg U-GOT KIES centre and the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum welcome you to a seminar with Professor Ashish Arora, Duke University, USA, moderated by Professor Maureen McKelvey, University of Gothenburg.
About the seminar
Prof Arora’s seminar will investigate the strengths, weaknesses, and unexpected effects of the evolving American Innovation Ecosystems, on productivity, use of science, and economic development.
Evidence of slowing productivity growth has led some to argue that the era of rapid technological advance is ending. Critics contend that scientific research has become too incremental and detached from practical needs, no longer delivering the transformative ideas that once drove productivity and economic prosperity.
However, private returns to R&D have grown, and science now contributes more, not less, to innovation. The difficulty lies elsewhere. In many technology fields, the translation of new scientific knowledge into commercial products has become harder. This bottleneck is not inevitable. Rather, it reflects changes in the architecture of the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem.
In the mid-twentieth century, the United States relied on large corporate research labs to integrate science, engineering and manufacturing. As those labs declined, the country turned to a fragmented mix of universities, startups and corporations. This arrangement has produced successes in fields like biopharmaceuticals but has struggled in deep tech sectors such as advanced batteries, semiconductors and clean energy hardware that require long timelines and heavy investment.
The weakness lies in the translational layer—the institutions that connect research to production. Two major policy prescriptions follow from this diagnosis. First, we call for renewing the social compact with large firms that still invest in scientific research: in exchange for the privileges that come with scale and regulatory tolerance, they should recommit to long term R&D and more open knowledge sharing.
Regulators can take these contributions into account when awarding contracts or weighing antitrust actions. Second, we argue for strengthening institutions that support the division of innovative labour. Universities, national labs, and focused research organisations have a potentially useful part in such arrangements.
About Professor Ashish Arora
Professor Ashish Arora is the Senior Associate Dean for Strategy and the Rex D. Adams Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and associated with NBER. His research focuses on the economics of technology and technical change. He is well-known for his research about markets for technology and the American Innovation Ecosystem. He will talk about this forthcoming book: Arora, A. (forthcoming 2026). Inventing Prosperity.
Two relevant publications to read for this seminar
Arora, A., Belenzon, S., Patacconi, A. and Suh, Jungkyu (2020). The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth. Innovation Policy and the Economy. Vol 20, Issue 1, pp. 39-93. Available at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/705638
Arora, A., Belenzon, S., Patacconi, A. and Suh, Jungkyu (2025). The reorganization of the American innovation ecosystem and the challenge of translating science. Industrial and Corporate Change. Vol 354, Issue 6, pp. 1206-1228.