Long-Term Innovation Waves and the Potential Dissonance between Europe and Asia

Abstract

During the last few decades, dramatic events have transformed the global economy. The breakthrough of microelectronics and the diffusion of digital information and communication technology, often referred to as the Third Industrial Revolution, interacted with a new flood in globalization. While the industrial leaders placed their imprint upon the breakthrough period of ICT, globalization and economic growth was increasingly dominated by developments in China and India from the 1990s onwards. These two giant economies attained a new significance in international matters from the turn of the millennium — particularly demonstrated after the Asian financial crisis at the end of the 1990s that saw a retardation in growth in large parts of Eastern and Southeastern Asia but a further acceleration in the Chinese and Indian economies. Contrasts and contradictions in the new global situation were even more acutely expressed in the global crisis that emerged in 2008, which signifies the need for thorough adaptations to new structural conditions and may also indicate a historical turning point into a new trend period. The main idea of this chapter is to put the present economic situation into a long-term historical perspective and discuss the prospects of new innovation waves over the next decades and their implications for Europe and Asia, with a particular emphasis on the