Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy
Markets, Speculation and the State
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- $42.99
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- $42.99
Publisher Description
The innovation economy begins with discovery and culminates in speculation. Over some 250 years, economic growth has been driven by successive processes of trial and error: upstream exercises in research and invention and downstream experiments in exploiting the new economic space opened by innovation. Drawing on his professional experiences, William H. Janeway provides an accessible pathway for readers to appreciate the dynamics of the innovation economy. He combines personal reflections from a career spanning forty years in venture capital, with the development of an original theory of the role of asset bubbles in financing technological innovation and of the role of the state in playing an enabling role in the innovation process. Today, with the state frozen as an economic actor and access to the public equity markets only open to a minority, the innovation economy is stalled; learning the lessons from this book will contribute to its renewal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Consumers measure the economy's strength by the things that affect them most, including job security, prices for staples like food and gas, and home values. As the Warburg Pincus Technology Investment team's director, Janeway aims this economic treatise at financial professionals, like himself, who shape consumers' economic life while assessing the economy very differently. Drawing on 40 years of experience in venture capital, Janeway breaks the "Innovation Economy" down into three abstract components: the state, defined by its coercive power over the market; the market economy, comprised of "institutions that enable the production and exchange of goods and services"; and financial capitalism, dubbed "discontinuous opportunism." The book's first half relates the many changes he has witnessed on Wall Street, from the advent of the computer, to the resurgence of IPOs, to the explosion in venture capital. The second half advises investors on accessing opportunity. Seeking to promote understanding of how bubbles work in the economy, Janeway offers detailed accounts of several incidents from history, emphasizing the role of the state. This dense tome will find its ideal audience among the market-savvy.
