‘Technological Revolution’ as an Innovation Superwave in the World Technological Frontier Area

The ‘world technological frontier’ may be defined as comprising all production methods which at any given time are either most economical or most productive in the world. If known to firms, these world-best methods would be the only candidates for selection, the actual choice depending as usual on local prices, output demands, resource endowments, and so forth. There may also be firms which know only some of the methods in question, but whose choices would, under this limited knowledge, remain the same as when their knowledge was complete. The collection of firms of both categories is what we shall call ‘technological frontier area’ (TFA).