Great Ideas Are Growing Scarce. That’s Not So Great.

Without technological innovation, humans would still be scratching out a subsistence living. In the future, innovation will be essential to everything from feeding from the world's growing population to saving the planet from climate change. The U.S. economy, meanwhile, is increasingly dependent on knowledge industries, which require continuous innovation in order to make their products. And by boosting the potential rate of economic growth, innovation creates a positive-sum world where everyone can get ahead.

Unfortunately, innovation might be slowing down. Except for a brief resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, developed-country productivity -- of which innovation a major long-term driver -- has been growing more slowly since 1973. Meanwhile, some studies suggest that research productivity is slowing down, so that it takes more scientists to glean each new insight across a variety of fields: