In his latest influential book, Le pouvoir de la destruction créatrice (Odile Jacob, 2020), Philippe Aghion, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, defends the importance of technological innovation for economic growth and productivity. According to Aghion, economic growth and improved productivity in any developed society occur thanks to a dynamic of “creative destruction” in which the new replaces the old, creating dynamics of creation and destruction that ultimately generate a net gain for society as a whole. It is not a zero-sum game. The data also show that intense competition in a sector, far from being a brake on innovation, is a spur that drives sectors with greater technological value, increasing their leadership and accelerating the replacement or disappearance of those with less innovative capacity. According to Aghion, a smart industrial policy would therefore be one that catalyzes these substitution mechanisms based on technological innovation and does not unnecessarily overprotect those destined to disappear.

This dynamic of creative destruction has echoes in nature. Those organisms (companies) that are better adapted to their environment (more competitive) tend to prevail and replace the less fit organisms of their own species. It is, therefore, a form of economic Darwinism in which mechanisms of cooperation (altruism) and mutual interdependence (stable ecosystems) are not absent. In the end, it is society (or the ecosystem) as a whole that wins. Technological innovation is, therefore, a way of improving adaptability to the environment (unmet needs) that drives global economic growth by improving overall productivity.