Others link the slowdown to the types of innovation that have emerged overtime: those which took place in the second half of the 20th century (“general purpose technologies” such as electrification) may be much more significant than those that characterize the 21st century (such as ICT and the digital economy).
Recent evidence based on firm-level data from several OECD countries seems to show that innovation has not slowed down; rather, the pace at which innovation is spread across the economy (“the diffusion machine”) has weakened.