@soryang for quite a while. Along the way I have read quite a bit about it, the different kinds of innovation and the impetus behind innovation. Which brings me to a pet peeve. Nobody should ever, ever have a sentence which equates Bill Gates with innovation. Innovation, new stuff, is driven by passion, not profit.

An oldy but a goody from 2013:

How Big Finance Crushes Innovation and Holds Back Our Economy
...
Financiers may appear to be simply “making money out of money,” but if you look closely, you can see that they are really getting rich on the backs of people producing useful things, like consumer electronics, and capital goods like factories and equipment. Good jobs, the health of the overall economy and society, growing incomes for the poor and middle class—all of these things have been put aside in the quest for more financial profits. The game is unsustainable. And it’s turning out badly.
..snip...
Think about it: what GE product did you recently purchase that enhanced your life? In the era of financialization, big companies like GE have turned their attention to making quick Wall Street profits instead of fabulous products. In the 1980s, for example, GE’s Jack Welch rapidly expanded the company’s business into issuing credit cards, mortgage lending and other financial activities. It wouldn’t be long before financial operations accounted for almost half of the company's profit.
...snip...

https://www.alternet.org/2013/07/economy-innovation

And then there's one a little older 2011:

A Dozen Economic Facts About Innovation

During the past century, innovation in mechanics, computing technology, medicine, and business practices has driven economic growth, raised wages, and helped Americans lead longer and healthier lives. The development of assembly line production, for example, and its application to the mass production of automobiles reduced the time to produce the Model T Ford by 68 percent over six years and reduced its cost by 62 percent, allowing middle-class families to afford what had once been a luxury (Williams, Haslam, and William 1992). The rapid pace of innovation and increases in productivity continued for most of the century, expanding the efficiency of American workers and providing more valuable goods and services at lower prices.

Since the 1970s, however, the pace of innovation has slowed, leading to lower overall wage growth for American workers. Moreover, those gains that have been made have not been shared equally across society. Although average wages have risen, buoyed by strong gains at the top of the distribution, the wages of many Americans have stagnated or fallen after adjusting for the cost of living over the past forty years. Reinvigorating the momentum of innovation that benefits all Americans is imperative to create broad-based economic growth and higher living standards.
...snip...
Since 1973 the pace of innovation, as measured by TFP growth, has slowed. Prior to 1973, TFP increased at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, but since then this growth rate has fallen to 0.7 percent. If TFP had continued growing at the pre-1973 trend and that productivity gain were reflected in workers’ compensation, compensation could be 51 percent higher, or about $18 per hour more than today’s average of $35.44 per hour. This calculation highlights that small changes in innovation and annual TFP growth lead to large differences in long-run standards of living.

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/a_dozen_economic_facts_about_inno...

Somewhere in my electronic, unindexed literature I have a book written about the wonderful job Welch did to GM. It's around here somewhere...

Added: Loaned it to a friend:

The Man Who Broke Capitalism

How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy

By David Gelles
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 31, 2022)
Length: 272 pages
ISBN13: 9781982176440

...pulling back from the warfare state but doubling down:

In An Age Of Innovation, Big Defense May Be The Closest Thing Washington Has To A Real Industrial Policy
Loren Thompson Forbes Nov 10

...The biggest tech companies in China are facing their own headwinds, thanks to the increasingly intrusive rule of Xi Jinping. But that doesn’t change the fact that America needs to stay ahead of China in the business of innovation.

Innovation, the process of transforming discoveries into useful products, is widely viewed as the key to military and economic supremacy. The question U.S. policymakers may need to face in the years ahead is how to preserve a robust rate of innovation if companies such as AppleAAPL -1.5% and Google falter.

Part of the answer may lie in the defense industry, especially among the biggest players. These companies are sometimes viewed as innovation laggards in popular culture, even though they lead the world in warfighting technology...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2022/11/10/in-an-age-of-innov...

When I first read the title of this Forbes article, for a moment I thought, is this an admission? Is it satire? No it's for real, demonstrating Wall Street's enthusiastic support of the warfare state. Like the German industrialists of the 1930s they're "all in."