The structural transformation Economic progress is often celebrated as a story of innovation, technological breakthroughs, and institutional advancement. It reshapes everyday life by replacing old practices with new systems, rendering obsolete products and methods that once seemed indispensable. Though innovation has been present throughout human history, sustainable economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon. The emergence of this modern growth trajectory is commonly associated with Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Economic historian and Nobel Laureate of 2025, Joel Mokyr argues that the take- off of sustained economic growth took place in Britain with the Industrial Revolution, commonly set between 1760 and 1830.

After Britain, economic take-offs into sustained growth have occurred in several Western countries. According to Mokyr, earlier civilizations experienced cycles of progress and stagnation. But scientific knowledge is rarely then translated into continuous economic production. The Industrial Revolution in Britain marked a turning point: scientific innovation became institutionalised. Technological advances fed into production, and economic growth became permanent rather than temporary. This ‘new normal’ of growth fundamentally changed living standards over the long term. Mokyr advocates that the Industrial Revolution in Britain had an intellectual origin.

The Enlightenment, a pan-European movement, started in 1685 and ended in 1815, according to Mokyr, and paved the way for linking scientific inventions to te chnological innovations. Enlightenment thinkers insisted that scientific ideas should be reproducible, verifiable, and practically useful. Scientists started to find methods and experiments that should be reproducible and should have economic value addition. Enlightenment facilitated an increase in knowledge and its accessibility to those who could make best use of it. It spread to a large circle and the circle was becoming larger.

The collective knowledge in society in Europe was much greater than in any other area on the globe at that time. The total amount of knowledge – scientific or otherwise – that society controlled was vast. This vast array of knowledge had successfully been transformed into economic production and that is the primary reason for rapid economic growth of the Western economies. The intellectual elucidations were supported by institutional efforts. Intellect turned out to be the capital that could foster economic growth. Mokyr writes: “The short answer as to why the West........

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