Further to Roger Sandilands' posting on Schumpeter, it is true that
innovations often come in bursts. It is also true that applications of old
innovations often come in bursts, in new regions. It must be the cultural
and institutional environment in the new region that fosters the
application.

Canals were as old as history during England's canal boom of the 18th
Century, and again the U.S.A. boom 1820-40 or so. Irrigation was as old or
older when it boomed in early 20th Century California. Railroads were old in
Europe during the r.r. booms in the U.S.A.

The settlement pattern in Silicon Valley fostered the culture of innovation
and mutual stimulation and easy swapping of personnel that made the Valley
boom - and bust, and boom again, and overtake Mass. Rte. 128 with its
scattered, isolated, and narcissistic electronic firms. Urban economists, of
course, have published reams about "urban linkages" and the "nursery"
function of creative cities, often using New York City as Case #1.
Glorifying and romanticizing individual entrepreneurs, lifted from their
localized matrices, would give a false caste to history. Evidently
Schumpeter did that, or at least encouraged others who did.

Mason Gaffney