A Theory of the General Causes of Long Waves: War, General Purpose Technologies, and Economic Change

Technological Innovation

Technological innovation is when inventions of new things and/or new ways of doing things are transformed into usable devices and applications to enable organizations and/or adopters to take advantage of important opportunities, to cope with consequential problems or environmental threats. Technological innovation is an element of the complex system of technology directed to satisfy needs, achieve goals, and solve problems of adopters in society. The origin and diffusion of technological innovation are main characteristics of the evolution of technology directed to support wealth creation and the development of human societies.

R&D investments and quality of life in Turkey

The standards of development and life quality of cities play an important role in the investment and career planning of the investors and the qualified people who will work in R&D and Technoparks. Also, all the leading cities in the world are the most developed cities in the regions and countries in terms of R&D and innovation. Therefore, all cities in Turkey are compared by using the R&D investment data and TurkStat “Quality of Life Index for Cities". The criteria are weighted by the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP). Then 81 cities are compared with the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method. The article aims to provide information about the current situation of Turkey's cities regarding R&D, Technology Development Zones and quality of life. According to the results, the quality of life and socio-economic development has a very close relationship with the existence of R&D investments. If the current development policy continues, the regions with low quality of life will continue to lag behind the other cities in terms of development. The study indicates that there are remarkable differences between eastern and western Turkey in terms of living standards and the contribution of R&D and Technoparks to economic development.