Successful Innovators as Role Models for Ethical Investors

Zusammenfassung

When knowledge about a certain phenomenon is scarce, as is the case about innovation in differentiated, diversified industrial firms, then the scientific estate sometimes reacts with the generation of a new line of research, possibly with a few rivaling research programs populating the new line of inquiry. Before defendable predictionsand dependable recommendationscan flow from such novel research, it must achieve analytical rigor. This takes time. In the analytical phasesuch research generates statements of the explanatorytype; and only if the analytical statements become sufficiently accurate (parameters) and precise (predictions) can the new field advance into the normative phase. Unfortunately, some scientists sometimes leapfrog the analytical stage and jump to normative conclusions too soon, embarrassing themselves and the users of premature knowledge that later turns out to be incorrect. Such blunders have frustrated a good many innovation policy makers in corporate headquarters and government agencies in recent years.