Sources of Major Technological Breakthroughs : Purposeful Systems with Purposeful Elements Having a Common Purpose of Global Leadership

The fundamental problem in the field of the economics of innovation is how countries achieve and sustain technological and economic advantage. This study confronts the problem here by developing a theoretical framework based on the concept of purposeful system having a purpose of global leadership, which endeavours to analyze the sources of technical change by countries in a Schumpeterian world of innovation-based competition and also in the presence of potential military competition. This approach is supported by historical and empirical evidence concerning leading societies in terms of technological and economic change: Ancient Roman society, Victorian Britain and current USA. The main conceptual finding, which may represent the most important driving force of technological change, is that a socio-economic system (e.g., country) in a particular time span, context dependent, acts as a purposeful system with the purpose to achieve a geographical, cultural, political and economic leadership on a wide geo-economic area, supporting also higher technological performances. The strategy to achieve this purpose is based on high R&D military expenditures and a modus operandi of warfare. This strategy, by victories of wars, can generate a vital geo-economic leadership and support changes in the techno-economic paradigms and General Purpose Technologies conducive to high technological and economic performance. The linkages between critical concepts can be the foundation for a general theory of sources of the major technological breakthroughs