General Purpose Technologies as an emergent property

We address the emergence of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), the process which has been largely neglected in the literature on technological change. We do this from a novel network-based perspective emphasizing the relations between technologies and how combinations of those technologies form final goods. Transforming GPT emergence into a question of technology adoption we demonstrate that GPTs are more likely to emerge when certain conditions with regard to the following techno-economic factors are met: knowledge diffusion, concentration of R&D efforts and variation in the rank of expected returns on products. Focusing solely on a discovery process our model demonstrates an impressive fit to real data reproducing a number of stylised facts including technological lock-ins, S-shaped curves of technology adoption, temporal clustering of innovations and distinct features of empirical networks of relatedness among technologies and products.