Late to the Revolution: The High Cost of Tech Lag
Countries that innovate early in transformative technologies tend to capture a disproportionate share of the economic value, making it exceptionally difficult for latecomers to catch up.
In modern technologies like AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, and space, leading regions again dominate R&D, patents, and markets, leaving others facing steep adoption curves and diminished returns. We shall examine key technologies across industrial revolutions. We can loosely categorize countries based on when they adopt transformative technologies:
- Innovator nations: They pioneer the technology and capture value by setting standards, owning core intellectual property, and building foundational ecosystems. They often bear high risk and high costs in R&D.
- Fast follower nations: They quickly invest and adapt to capture value through efficient scaling, manufacturing, specialized applications, or developing strong domestic markets. Catching up requires significant, focused investment.
- Late entrant nations: They adopt when the technology is mature and mostly already commoditized. They capture value mainly through productivity gains from using the technology. They tend to import the technology, which risks increasing dependency on innovators or fast followers.
These groups do not overlap with the ones from the innovation-adoption (i.e. technology diffusion) model with its innovators (i.e. tech enthusiasts), early adopters, early/late majority, and laggards. The difference is that in the technology diffusion model, we look at the adopters of a technology (consumers), not the inventors or builders (producers).
Value capture refers to reaping of the various benefits of innovation at a national level: GDP growth, IP ownership, high-skilled jobs, or global influence. The cost of catching up includes financial investment (e.g. R&D, infrastructure), human capital development (e.g. education), strategic policy effort (e.g. industrial strategy, regulation), and often decades of sustained national focus.
First-mover advantage vs economic backwardness
There is only a first-mover advantage if innovators can build defensible assets through intellectual property rights, trade secrets, customer loyalty or lock-in effects, economies of scale, or network effects. That also includes complementary assets, such as marketing, manufacturing, and distribution. For countries, innovation clusters (e.g. Silicon Valley) provide the ecosystems for modern innovations to succeed on a global stage. It is why the USA has been the global leader in many advanced technologies. Without such “moats” or technology parks, late entrants tend to do better when they compete on cost and speed or process rather than product innovations.
Countries that are late to the technological revolution party can sometimes be at an advantage, because they can import advanced technologies without costly trial-and-error. These nations do require powerful institutional mechanisms, such as large investment banks or direct state intervention, to mobilize sufficient capital rapidly for large-scale, advanced industries, unlike the gradual, entrepreneurial path of pioneers. The greater the so-called backwardness, the more pronounced the need for scale, speed, and these institutional drivers. As we shall see, this is not impossible: it happened in the United States and Germany during the First Industrial Revolution (steel), Japan (automobiles) during the Second Industrial Revolution, Taiwan and South Korea (semiconductors) during the Third Industrial Revolution, and China may do the same in the Fourth Industrial Revolution with AI. Or perhaps not, in case they end up on the receiving end of the United States’ ire.
For late entrants to be successful, they must turn technology management into a strategic driver like the innovators do. Too often, it is seen as separate from product innovation. At the national level, that translates to having a clear technology strategy that is backed up by investments rather than words.
Visual summary
In past eras, technology diffusion was slow, as it took decades or longer for the steam engine and internal combustion engine to be copied. Innovations are nowadays adopted and adapted much faster: the internet, smartphones, or AI. Innovators must therefore defend harder and faster now, lest fast followers catch up quickly.
This is shown in the charts below. First is the shift in relative value captured due to delayed innovation diffusion/adoption. Innovators capture all of the initial value, but their ideas are copied and refined by fast followers. If these are copied fast, the fast followers can capture significant value. If not, the innovators continue to benefit longer.
The fast followers’ curve may go beyond that of the innovators’, in which case we speak of fast follower dominance rather than innovator dominance. This is indicated by the vertical arrows up and down on the fast followers’ curve. Note that “time” (on the horizontal axes) is a bit of a misnomer:
It is not the passage of time that leads to progress, but the application of effort. Richard N. Forster (1984)
In relative terms, we can see the effects of innovation replication speed and dominance as follows:
If innovators continue to dominate due to barriers of entry or control of crucial resources, they have a larger share of the overall value generated, indicated by the coloured area. Fast followers can in many instances dominate as they reduce marginal costs, which in turn leads to higher relative value captured by fast followers. In general, late entrants only capture a small share of the total value generated by an innovation as they can only compete on price when the technology has already been proven, scaled, and turned into a commodity.
The shape of the relative value captured curve is because disruptive technologies often start and end with low value due to poor performance or efficiency (initially) and later disruption or market saturation (eventually). The middle is where the technology meets mainstream needs and therefore the highest value. Financial value often peaks ahead of adoption, because margins shrink as soon as late fast followers and late entrants appear on the market.
If innovators vanish altogether, for instance as they move on to another innovation or lose out to fast followers, the relative value captured looks as follows:
Industrial Revolutions
By examining past technological revolutions, we can see not only how difficult it is for latecomers to catch up, but also how the vast majority of the economic and strategic value is often captured by early movers, and the significant cost latecomers face in trying to close the gap. The salient details are captured in the table below, but more details are available in the text afterwards.
| IR | Technology | Innovators | Fast followers: catch-up | Late entrants: catch-up | Innovator dominance | GDP: catch-up | Labour productivity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Steam engine | UK: 1769 | US, Germany: 30–50 years | Asia, LatAm: >100 years |
|
|
+0.8% |
| Railroads | UK: 1825 | US, Germany: 10–30 years | Japan: 80 years Asia, LatAm: >100 years |
||||
| 2 | Electrification | UK, US: 1882 | Europe, Japan: 30–50 years | Asia, LatAm: >70 years |
|
|
+2.0% |
| Telegraph | UK, US, France: 1850 | Germany, Russia: 30–50 years | — | ||||
| Automobile | Germany: 1886 US: 1908 (mass production) |
UK, France, Japan: 30–40 years | China: 100 years | ||||
| 3 | Computer | UK, US: 1945 | Germany, France: 10 years | Japan: 40 years South Korea, Taiwan: 60 years China: >75 years |
|
|
+3.0% |
| Internet | US: 1960 Switzerland: 1990 |
Europe, Japan: <10 years | Asia, LatAm: 20 years | ||||
| Aerospace | US, Russia: 1955 | China, Europe, Japan, India: 25–50 years | — | ||||
| 4 | AI | US, UK, Canada: 2010s | China: 10 years Europe: 15 years |
|
China: est. 50 years (🇺🇸) | <1.0% | |
| IIoT/Robotics | US, Germany, Japan: 1970s | South Korea, Singapore: 15 years |
IR1: First Industrial Revolution (1760–1840)
Steam engine
The United Kingdom kick-started IR1, which was powered by the steam engine, patented by James Watt in 1769. By 1800, the UK had more than 2,500 steam engines running in mines, cotton mills, and factories. A hundred years later there were 9.5 million steam-powered machines. The USA, Germany, and France needed 30–50 years of investment to bridge the gap. Countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa imported steam machinery only after 1900.
Railroads
The first steam railway was built in the UK in 1825 with 2,390 km of railroad tracks in 1840, which grew to more than 30,000 km by 1900. It took the USA and Germany 10–30 years to match the UK’s rail network density and thus utility. A sage investment: every dollar invested in the railroad infrastructure yielded $1.60 to the US GDP in the first year alone.
Japan caught up by 1904 with 3,400 km of train tracks as part of its Meiji Restoration. Rail networks in the rest of the world appeared much later and frequently for colonial resource extraction, so that little value was captured by local economies.
Mechanized textile production
Steam-powered mills outproduced traditional weavers, and Britain surpassed India as the leading cotton textile manufacturer in the 19th century. Significant local industrial production only re-emerged late in the 19th century under colonial rule. Again, little local value was captured.
Resources
The key resources for IR1 were coal and iron. By 1850, Britain produced about half of all coal and pig iron. It mined two-thirds of the world’s coal. The UK manufactured 32% of all products around 1870, followed by the USA (23%), Germany (13%), India (11%), and France (10%). The rest was divided by Russia (4%), Belgium (3%), Canada (2%), and others. Note that India was at that time a colony of the British Empire and therefore not independent.
Economy
The UK’s GDP per capita from 1800 was matched by the US after 45 years, Germany and France after 80 years, and Japan only after 125 years. Around 1900, the UK’s lead in terms of capital per worker had already vanished. And by 1913, the USA was ahead of both Germany and the UK in industrial output. This clearly shows that countries were able to follow its lead into the industrial revolution and, in the case of the US and Germany, even overtake the UK. Labour productivity in the UK only grew modestly at 0.78% annually.
IR2: Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914)
Electricity
The first power stations were built in New York and London in 1882. The electrification of factories was crucial for mass production. The first Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line in the US in 1908. Consequently, the US achieved massive scale in industry that was hard to match for the rest of the world. By 1925, the US produced 40% of the world’s electrical energy.
In Western Europe and Japan, electrification of cities happened by the early 1900s, but it took 30–40 more years for widespread adoption. Electrification in Latin America and Asia did not occur until the mid-20th century.
Telecommunications
The electric telegraph was patented in 1837 by Samuel Morse. A mere thirteen years later, a telegraph cable connected England and France, and the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1866. In only twenty years, the number of telegraph messages increased sixfold.
Germany, Russia, and India built national networks in the late 19th century. Telegraph access came late to most European colonies and expanded alongside rail networks.
Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876. The UK, USA, and Germany built extensive national telephone networks by the 1920s. About thirty years later, Japan and Scandinavian countries had the same level of communication networks, which required substantial investment in telephone lines and infrastructure for switches. The developing world more or less leapfrogged telegraphs and landline telephones; they went straight for mobile technologies. This came at the cost of decades of no or limited integration with the global telephone network.
The wireless telegraph, or radio, was commercialized by Guglielmo Marconi who sent the first message across open sea in 1897. Amplitude modulation (AM) enabled audio to be sent wirelessly. The first radio broadcasts took place in the Netherlands, Argentina, and the United States in 1919–1920. In only two years since, the US had 600 radio stations. By 1930, 40% of American households owned a radio set. The FM radio arrived three years later.
Industrial chemistry
Synthetic dye was pioneered in the UK by William Henry Perkin in 1856, yet German industry dominated the market for dyes by 1900. In 1913, 90% of all dye was produced in Germany.
The industrial production of ammonia for fertilizer led to the Nobel prize in chemistry for Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber in 1918, five years after BASF already produced it at industrial scale. The ammonia was also used to produce munitions. Germany had near-total control of ammonia production until at least 1920, as the company refused to license their technology to anyone or build plants abroad.
Combustion engine
Horses provided a decentralized means of power to the world for centuries. While the steam engine and electrification centralized power generation, the internal combustion engine (ICE) decentralized it again. Karl Benz’s 1886 patent for the automobile came only a decade after Nicolaus Otto’s ICE, which, coincidentally, happened in the same year as the design of the modern bicycle. While most of the early development happened in Europe, it was the United States’ electrified assembly lines that allowed for fast scaling up of production and affordable automobiles.
The UK, France, and Japan developed their own car industries by the 1920s and beyond, often built on top of foreign technology licences. Most countries did not have significant domestic car industries until the middle of the last century. They relied on imports for many decades, so they captured little value from production.
The US also invested heavily in road infrastructure, leading to the federal highways between 1916 and 1926 when they were numbered. By 1920, there were 8 million cars on American roads. Germany improved and extended its roads by the 1930s with the development of the Autobahn. France introduced autoroutes in the 1940s, the M1 in the UK opened to traffic in 1959, and Japan’s first one was completed in 1963. The lack of road infrastructure hindered many a country, which shows the crucial role of complementary technologies: a car without a road is not all that useful. The same goes for rubber and petroleum: drilled oil wells were already constructed in the 1850s (US) and the pneumatic tyre was invented in the 1870s (UK).
Resources
Steel, oil, and copper were the crucial resources for IR2. In 1856, Henry Bessemer patented what is now known as the Bessemer process, which enabled the mass production of steel, a core ingredient for cars, railroads, and skyscrapers. A mere decade later, the open-hearth furnace, or Siemens–Martin process, became the standard. The UK initially had a lead in pig iron (47%) and steel (40%) in 1875, but already before the turn of the century its share of iron dropped to 29% and steel to 23%. The US and Germany had growth rates in steel of 7% and 6%, respectively. By 1920, the former produced three times as much as the latter.
The US initially led in the production of oil, producing 80–90% of the world’s oil from 1850 to 1880, but in 1900 half the world’s oil came from Russia. A few years later, the US regained the pole position in the production of oil and has maintained it ever since, save for the period between 1980 and 2015 when Saudi Arabia was ahead of the United States.
Britain produced half of all copper in the 1800s, but by the end of the century it was the US that produced the most. By 1900, the North American nation produced 80% of the world’s copper.
Economy
Labour productivity in the US grew more than 2% each year during IR2. Japan’s industrial output grew 5–8% per year, primarily boosted by heavy industry. By the turn of the century it produced modern textiles, warships, and machinery. Russia had begun its industrialization in the 1890s, yet it was defeated by Japan in 1905, which underscores how transformative the Meiji Restoration was to the nation, as it had moved from a feudal agrarian state to an industrialized nation. By 1914, Russia still lagged behind the US and Germany.
Countries that did not industrialize benefited little from the inventions of IR2. Around 1900, industrialization was confined to Western Europe, North America, and Japan. Most of Asia, Latin America, and to some extent Africa were primarily exporters of agricultural goods and raw materials, not manufacturers. Consequently, little value was captured from IR2 by these regions, as in IR1. Colonial restrictions made it impossible for many nations to boost their economies.
In terms of GDP per capita, the UK still topped the list in 1900, followed closely by the US, then the Western European nations, and Japan far behind. By 1918, the US had overtaken the UK. To achieve the UK’s 1900 GDP-per-capita level, it took Western European nations 40–50 years, Japan 60 years, and 80 years for both Taiwan and South Korea. Argentina achieved it around 1930, Venezuela in 1938, and Uruguay in 1946, though Brazil, Mexico, and Chile needed 70–80 years.
IR3: Third Industrial Revolution (1950–2000)
Computers and semiconductors
Z3 (Germany, 1941), Colossus at Bletchley Park (UK, 1944) and ENIAC (US, 1945) were the first programmable digital computers based on vacuum tubes. Modern transistors were invented around the same time at Bell Labs and yielded the mainframe in the 1950s. The integrated circuit came in the late 1950s, which ushered in the age of semiconductors. All were American inventions. Computers, particularly mainframes, centralized data processing, which was then decentralized with the advent of the personal computer and smartphone, only to be partially re-centralized again with the emergence of the cloud.
British, French, and German companies built their own computers, but these struggled against American competitors. It was not until the 1980s that Japan became dominant in electronics and semiconductors. The land of the rising sun has since been replaced by South Korea and Taiwan in the 2000s. Nowadays, the US commands nearly half of all chip sales through design and intellectual property. Taiwan accounts for more than two-thirds of all advanced fabrication, followed by South Korea, which has about 12% of the market. Taiwan and South Korea each invested more than 2% of GDP in science and R&D for over a decade. Today, the former invests almost 4% of its GDP on R&D, while the latter spends 5%. These three nations capture the bulk of industry profits.
China may be a late entrant, but has invested billions to ramp up domestic production. It holds roughly 9% of global sales, though that may go up to a quarter in a few years. Europe has about 10% market share, primarily in specialized chips. Catching up in semiconductors requires massive investments.
Internet
ARPANET was developed by the US Department of Defense in the 1960s. It is a forerunner of the modern internet, which came about at CERN (Switzerland) in the 1990s with the world wide web. The US, Western Europe, and Japan built the early networks during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2010, the internet accounted for 3.4% of GDP globally.
In many rural areas in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, people still struggle with basic connectivity and affordability. Only 35% of all people in the least developed nations are online. These countries capture a negligible share of the market.
China had limited bandwidth capacity prior to 2000, but in less than 20 years, it managed to overtake the US in national bandwidth potential, a sign that substantial investment can allow a country to catch up.
Mobile telephony
Though the technology dates back to the 1940s and Bell Labs, it was not until 1979 that Japan launched the first commercial cellular network. Two years later the Nordic countries did the same in Europe. In 1991, the first digital wireless networks were constructed in Finland, which kickstarted the wireless revolution. Another two years afterwards, the first 2G networks in the US were built. Key companies included Motorola (USA), AT&T (USA), Northern Telecom (Canada), Nokia (Finland), Ericsson (Sweden), NTT (Japan), NEC (Japan). Many of these were later displaced by Apple (USA), Google (USA), Samsung (South Korea), Huawei (China), Xiaomi (China), and briefly Blackberry (Canada).
Countries that had missed out on telephones during IR2 could now skip to mobile phones. Again, little value was captured by countries that merely adopted the technology. The bulk of the value is still intercepted by the primary producers of either hardware or software.
Aerospace
The space race was between the US and Russia from 1955 onwards, who over two decades spent roughly half of the global aerospace R&D each. China, Europe, Japan, and India took about 25–50 years to catch up, but they do nowadays have independent launch capabilities and satellite programmes.
Today the United States accounts for approximately 62% of government space budgets globally. China is next with 12%, followed by Europe (11%), Japan (4%), Russia (3%), and India (1%). Most other countries rely on foreign launch providers and satellite services (e.g. communications and imaging). They capture little value beyond usage.
Resources
Semiconductors and rare earth minerals powered IR3. Nowadays, China produces 80% of global silicon, but initially it was the US that controlled more than half of the source materials up to 1985, though figures for electronics-grade polysilicon capacity were considered a trade secret and therefore not published. Until the 1980s, the United States controlled rare earth minerals, satisfying up to 80% of global demand. Since then China accounts for up to 90% of global exports. The largest deposits are in China, Brazil, and India.
Crucial to the production of many technologies in IR3 is factory automation. Many advanced semiconductor fabrication facilities (fabs) rely on full automation.
Aluminium is another key ingredient of IR3 in transportation, electronics, packaging, and construction. China, India, and Russia are the largest exporters of the metal, though in the 1970s the US and Europe were the largest producers.
Economy
The United States dominated IR3, too. No wonder: by 1960, the country was responsible for 69% of the world’s entire R&D expenditure. In 2020, that figure was still high but down to 31%. China is a close second, followed by Japan, Germany, and South Korea.
The US’s GDP per capita from 1950 was matched by the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, and Japan in 10–20 years. South Korea and Taiwan managed it in 40 years. Argentina hit that figure after 50 years, Russia, after 55, and Brazil after more than 60 years. In 2018, China achieved that number, too.
Globalization was a key aspect of IR3. Satellites and aerospace are essential to telecommunications. These originated in the US and Russia. The jet engine and jet airliner (USA, UK, Canada, France, Russia) made it possible for people and goods to travel around the globe faster. Even the container ship (USA) dates from this era.
US labour productivity growth was around 3% p.a. during IR3. There is, however, a debate on whether IR4 is really only the next phase in digitization or its own revolution. The IR3 is occasionally referred to as the Information Age and it may be argued that it continues to this day.
IR4: Fourth Industrial Revolution (2010–present)
The idea of a IR4 was originally pitched in Germany, where it was dubbed Industry 4.0. As such, it does not really qualify as an industrial revolution yet, and the naming has already got out of hand with vague descriptions of a fifth, sixth, and seventh that mostly sound like extensions of the third. While there are many candidates (e.g. biotech, 3D printing, robotics, autonomous vehicles, XR, IoT), artificial intelligence is the core technology. The term cyber-physical systems is sometimes used, in which hardware, software, and humans are intertwined. Countries that lagged in technology before are expected to fall further behind, because wealth is concentrating in frontier economies.
AI: artificial intelligence
Though research in artificial intelligence and machine learning dates back to the 1950s, it was not until around 2010 that machine learning, and particularly deep learning, became economically relevant. The US and UK played a pivotal role in the establishment of the field, and in the 1990s, Canada also joined that illustrious list.
Only ten countries hold 90% of the patents and 70% of all exports related to digital products. As of today, the US holds 75% of the world’s AI compute for training, and China has 15%. That leaves 10% for everyone else. 100 firms account for 40% of global R&D expenditure. These are primarily in the US and China. Most developed nations have national strategies for artificial intelligence. The market is expected to grow to $4.8 trillion by 2033, though the benefits are concentrated in a few companies in the United States and China.
The fast followers (e.g. Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea) are primarily adopters of the technology developed elsewhere. Countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, are not yet catching up. They lack the data, compute infrastructure, skills, and political determination to ramp up quickly.
IIoT: industrial internet of things
Germany pushed for Industry 4.0 since 2011, though Japan and the USA have also been key innovators. Japan has been at the forefront of industrial robotics since the 1980s. In fact, Japan had the highest concentration of industrial robots in the mid-90s. South Korea and Singapore grabbed that crown from Japan in 2010.
Resources
As in IR3, silicon and rare earths are still essential. Lithium is a crucial ingredient for modern batteries, too. The largest producers are Australia, Chile, China, Zimbabwe, and Argentina.
More than half of the global AI talent pool is in the USA. China has about 12%, followed by the UK with 8%. The United States’ success is partly due to the fact that its companies pay elite researchers a lot. That may change as reports of a brain drain emerge as a consequence of the political landscape. With the proposed budget cuts to science, government R&D expenditure in the US could drop significantly below that of China and the European Union. Whether researchers actually leave or are merely crying wolf remains to be seen. Still, it represents an opportunity for many countries to attract top-tier talent who might even benefit from a change of scenery. The EU’s €500 million package to lure talent away is a mere 0.3% droplet in their R&D bucket.
43% of global private investment is in the United States. That is almost twelve times higher than the second country: China. Most of that is not because of inherent value but fear of missing out.
Economy
Labour productivity has dropped to below 1%, which is why some question why AI has not yet had a visible impact on output per hour, though others remain optimistic.
The US still tops GDP per capita, though China is closing the gap. It may take 50 years or more, though. Growth in European nations is in line with that of the USA.
What does it mean for quantum?
Quantum computing is not a general-purpose technology. QPUs are akin to GPUs in that they are specialized processors that can solve certain problems much faster than traditional CPUs. Quantum computers will, however, not replace classical computers; quantum devices will always be controlled by classical computers and therefore coexist. They may become essential in solving intractable problems in cryptography, chemistry, optimization, and machine learning.
It is clear that the US still dominates most technologies, but China and the European Union are close behind when it comes to quantum. China leads in the number of quantum computing patents filed, but it is the US that holds the most patents related to quantum computing: a quarter. Germany and Japan have 19% and 18%, respectively.
China is catching up though, as more than half of patents granted in the country are nowadays related to quantum technologies. The Asian nation’s researchers publish more papers on quantum tech than anyone else.
The UK, South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan all have active research and development in quantum computing backed by both private and public funds. The EU and Japan have recently strengthened their partnership in quantum technologies. The top-10 companies by the number of patents issued in the last decade are all from the USA, China, or Japan.
In Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, no significant national quantum programmes exist as of yet. These regions therefore capture little value, which will remain so until they decide to craft national or regional quantum strategies and invest in R&D. Based on history, it will take 10–20 years for these nations to catch up, even with substantial investments, including education and infrastructure. Without such investments, they stand to lose out on a transformational technology.
With such concentration of know-how in the United States and China, both nations will continue to lead the quantum revolution and grab an outsized share of the market. American quantum computers are currently ahead of most other nations’ in terms of both qubits and fidelity. History shows that catching up is possible but it requires considerable determination, focus, and investment.
The challenge of catching up
Across multiple industrial revolutions, from steam to semiconductors, catching up required decades of sustained investment coupled with institutional development. While successful catch-up is possible (e.g. Japan in electronics and cars, South Korea and Taiwan in semiconductors, or China in AI and quantum), it often involves immense national effort, strategic focus on specific niches, or significant state intervention. Simply adopting mature technologies yields productivity gains but rarely generates the wealth or influence associated with innovation leadership.
For the transformative technologies, such as AI and quantum computing, the stakes are even higher. The speed of development, the requirement for massive data and compute infrastructure, the scarcity of specialized talent, and the potential for winner-take-most dynamics suggest that the window for effective catch-up might be narrower, and the costs steeper, than ever before. Nations in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East risk not just missing an economic wave, but potentially facing deepening dependency in an increasingly technology-driven global landscape. Strategic investment, fostering talent, and international collaboration are critical, but overcoming the first-mover advantages established by innovator nations remains a formidable challenge. Crucial for nations is also to have both a strong academic base and commercialization capabilities: Europe has top-tier universities yet has lagged for decades in commercialization of ideas compared to the United States.
For today’s late entrants in AI, 6G, aerospace, biotechnology, or quantum, the clock is ticking. Tick. Tock.