Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital

Perez maps five technological revolutions onto a repeating shape: installation, a financial bubble, a turning point, then deployment, where the technology is absorbed into how institutions actually work. The productive period is the second half.

The idea I took

This is the book behind most of what I write here. In every shift, a large share of the value went not to whoever invented the technology but to whoever made institutions able to use it safely and at scale. That is a specific kind of work, it is mostly unglamorous, and it is the work I am interested in.

Where it stops

It is a historical model, and historical models persuade in proportion to how little you know about the periods they compress. The mechanism is more convincing than the timing.

Carlota Perez, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. Edward Elgar, 2003.