Collective invention during the British Industrial Revolution：the case of the Cornish pumping engine.docVIP

Collective invention during the British Industrial Revolution：the case of the Cornish pumping engine 02 CJE 28/3 beh011 347-364 FIN 6/4/04 10:33 am Page 347Cambridge Journal of Economics 2004, 28,347–363DOI: 104.1093/cje/beh011Collective invention during the BritishIndustrial Revolution: the case of theCornish pumping engineAlessandro Nuvolari*This paper argues that what Robert Allen has termed collective invention settings (that is,settings in which competing firms share technological knowledge) were a crucialsource of innovation during the early phases of industrialisation. Until now this