2 Some complications that can occur with Structural Change

2.4 Open-ended possibilities

Innovation occurs when the space of possibilities is too big for a single agent to effectively search, otherwise the innovation would be accessible to many different agents. This often occurs where there is a combinatorial explosion of such possibilities with size, as occurs in language. There is no possibility of blindly searching english language constructions for a good poem. Likewise searching through possible electronic circuits, computer programs, or machines is completely infeasible without the addition of considerable domain knowledge to constrain the search. This is in stark contrast to the situation where an agent is choosing between a very simple set of alternatives, be they products, strategies or technologies. Sometimes in situations of structural change, when the context of a whole system is being mutually determined, innovations can have a critical effect in shaping its whole future development. Contrawise innovations can have the effect of changing the economic context sufficiently to cause situations of rapid structural change.

The Role of Expressiveness in Modelling Structural Change - Bruce Edmonds - 16 MAY 96

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