… is from page 38 of 2006 Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps’s 2013 book, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (footnote excluded):
The more opportunity that an idea has to be evaluated by someone who can appreciate it, the less likely it is for a good idea to be passed up for funding. (To let the king pick all the creative projects for financing would be a recipe for making a monochromatic country.) Dynamism depends, among many other things, on the variety of entrepreneurs from whom to pick the one most in tune or most prepared to embody the new idea in a workable method or product. Clearly the pluralism among end-users is also important….
Historically, the system of creativity and vision described above – thus, growth in knowledge and innovation – exploded in the private sector, not the public sector. Could a comparable system for growth in knowledge and innovation function inside the public sector? Not if diversity among financiers, managers, and consumers is quite important.
