Prime Drivers of Globalization

What are the prime drivers of globalization? Where do they come from and how do they diffuse? And what are the fundamental patterns of global scale change that affect the dynamics of innovation and diffusion? Professor Jeffrey Sachs details the following drivers: technology, physical environment, demography, war, ideology, political institutions, and cultural institutions. He places a particular emphasis on technological change and its role in innovation and diffusion. Sachs emphasizes a few concepts that define how innovation and diffusion shape global change, notably:

1. Physical geography – an innovation being adopted in some regions but not others, creating leaders and laggards

2. War – sometimes spreading technology, often impeding the spread of technology

3. Learning-by-doing and leapfrogging – when a laggard not only rapidly adopts an innovation, but in doing so surpasses the leaders

4. Self-organizing evolutionary change and directed technological change – free ideas and resulting entrepreneurship brought to market versus state-driven research and development activities aimed at realizing the particular capability of a specific technology

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.