Ron Davison

The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization Ron Davison

The simple but sweeping premise of this book is that a fourth, entrepreneurial economy is emerging. This will be as different from the information economy as that was from the industrial economy before it, or as the industrial economy was from the agricultural economy. Since medieval times, the West has been defined by agricultural, industrial, and information economies. These three economies have transformed religion, politics, and finance. An emerging entrepreneurial economy promises to transform business. The Fourth Economy is a history book that tells your future. Using a pattern of social invention and revolution to tell the story of how the West emerged from the Dark Ages, it then uses this pattern to predict the sweeping changes of the next few decades. If the information economy is giving way to a new, fourth, entrepreneurial economy, it suggests something sobering and something exciting. What is sobering is that our old policies are no longer enough. What is exciting is that if we can reinvent ourselves as past generations did in the transition from agricultural to industrial, or industrial to information economies, we can experience prosperity and quality of life better than we could have hoped. The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization is a wildly optimistic book that will change how you think about the past and your future.