Closing Europe’s Dynamism Deficit
Europe has built an economic framework that protects yesterday’s champions at the expense of tomorrow’s potential winners. To remain competitive, sovereign, and secure in the 21st century, it will need a new model geared
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J Studios/Getty Images Closing Europe’s Dynamism Deficit Oct 2, 2026 Carl Benedikt Frey Europe has built an economic framework that protects yesterday’s champions at the expense of tomorrow’s potential winners. To remain competitive, sovereign, and secure in the 21st century, it will need a new model geared toward promoting domestic innovation and commercialization at scale.
OXFORD—Technology has always been a source of power. During the centuries when China sat near the world’s frontier of invention, it was also a master of statecraft. But with the Industrial Revolution in Europe, the decisive technologies of steam, steel, railways, and rifled artillery shifted the balance of power westward, inaugurating a period embedded in China’s collective memory as the “century of humiliation.”