Industrielle Forschungslabore wurden in Europa erfunden, machten aber die USA zu einer Technologie-Supermacht. Im Zentrum dieser Transformation stand eine organisatorische Innovation: das industrielle Forschungslabor – eine im deutschsprachigen Raum geborene Idee, die sich nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg in den USA rasch verbreitete.

**Industrial research labs were invented in Europe but made the U.S. a tech superpower**

AT A GLANCE:

The making of a tech superpower: The U.S. transition to a leading economy was not gradual; it happened abruptly in the early 1920s

Research labs as key drivers: The industrial research lab – an idea born in the German-speaking world – supercharged teamwork and led to an explosion of innovation

Engineers took over: engineers made up just 0.7% of the U.S. population but accounted for 25% of all patents by 1945

The shift did not benefit everyone equally: women and immigrants were largely shut out of the new system

This provides a new perspective on today’s AI breakthroughs, which are driven by a revival of R&D labs at tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon

How did the United States overtake Europe to become the world’s technological leader within just a few decades? A new study by researcher Frank Neffke from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) and colleagues from the Growth Lab at Harvard University published in the journal Research Policy suggests that the answer lies not primarily in technological breakthroughs but in a fundamental shift in how innovation itself was organized.

„We analyze systemic shifts in the way invention was organized in the US, supported by a massive data effort – digitizing hundreds of thousands of pages of historical documents, covering 1.6 million patents from millions of inventors between 1856 and 2000,“ Neffke says.

The researchers found that U.S. innovation did not evolve gradually. Instead, a cluster of abrupt changes occurred in the early 1920s. “**At the center of this transformation was an organizational innovation: the industrial research lab – an idea born in the German-speaking world that rapidly diffused in the U.S. after World War I.**” Around this time, invention became more science-based, teamwork became the norm, and engineers replaced craftsmen as the driving force behind technological progress.

For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048733325002112