Showing results by author "James Bessen" in All Categories

Historically, competition has powered progress under capitalism. Companies with productive new products rise to the top, but sooner or later, competitors come along with better innovations and disrupt the threat of monopoly. Dominant firms like Walmart, Amazon, and Google argue that this process of “creative destruction” prevents them from becoming too powerful or entrenched. But the threat of competition has sharply decreased over the past twenty years, and today’s corporate giants have come to power by using proprietary information technologies to create a tilted playing field.

Multibillion-dollar valuations in Silicon Valley have obscured underlying problems in the way the United States develops technology. Government policies increasingly favor powerful interest groups over promising start-ups, stifling technological innovation.