Education's Role in Technological Revolutions - A Conversation with Carlota Perez

Carlota Perez is a British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant. She studies the mutual shaping of technical change and society and the lessons provided by the history of technological revolutions for economic growth and development.

In Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002), Carlota put forward her theory of the emergence and diffusion of technological revolutions and of the role of finance in the process. She is currently working on a sequel, Beyond the Technological Revolution, funded by Anthemis UK, which will analyse the roles that government, business and civil society play in the deployment of the potential of each revolution.

Carlota is Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London, UK and at SPRU, the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, UK; Adjunct Professor of Technology and Socio-Economic Development at the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance at TalTech, Estonia. 

Her long career has spanned civil service, consultancy, academic research and teaching, beginning in the 1970s with an investigation into the structural causes of the energy crisis in her home country of Venezuela. After working on international technology transfer at the Institute of Foreign Trade in the 1970s, she became the founding Director of Technological Development at the Ministry of Industry (1980-83) – where, alongside other policy instruments to promote innovation, she created the first venture capital fund in the country.

Carlota has acted as consultant for several Latin American governments and for international organisations and multilateral agencies such as UN Industrial Development Organisation, United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), the Andean Pact, the World Bank, the OECD and the EU, where she chaired the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Expert Group for Green Growth and Jobs.

Social Links

Twitter: @CarlotaPrzPerez

Youtube: @CarlotaPerez