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century brought a further wave of innovation, with digitisation, computing and the internet generating a transformation of business and society. each of these inventions involved a creative leap of imagination. as adoption spread, each became in time a gpt, applicable across sectors, industries and geographies. like fire, these gpts then transformed industries, jobs and lifestyles in ways inconceivable to their creators. in each industrial revolution, a first imaginative step resulted in a great leap forward for societal living standards, a mass flourishing. 18 in that sense the three industrial revolutions of the past three centuries fit the longer - run evolutionary arc of humankind. it is creativity and imagination, fuelled by big brains and nourished by cooked meals, that set humans on their jet - propelled evolutionary path. the rapid, ideas - fuelled, progress made by societies over recent centuries is a continuation of that ever - upward evolutionary arc. except, that is, for one small detail. the evolutionary arc of humans has not been ever - upward. the historical path has not been a north - bound ascent. while human ingenuity and creativity have been ever - haldane ( 2018a ). mokyr ( 2011 ). all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches present, economies and societies have in fact spent protracted periods crabbing sideways. prior to the first industrial revolution, living standards appear to have been essentially static for several thousand years. 19 living standards in glasgow in 1750 were little different than their ancestors constructing hadrian ’ s wall. levels of poverty, nutrition, infant mortality, height and longevity would also have been indistinguishable. prior to the industrial revolution, societies and economies stood still, financially and physiologically. there was flat - lining, not mass flourishing. societal progress was far from being a social norm. what explains this great pause in living standards? it was not through lack of ideas and imagination. people did not suddenly make like monkeys for millennia. to the contrary, innovation came thick and fast in the pre - industrial era, from the windmill in the 12th century to the mechanical clock in the 13th, from the cannon in the 14th to the printing press in the 15th, from the postal service in the 16th to the telescope in the 17th. 20 it is clear pre - industrial innovation played an important role in fuelling subsequent growth. shakespeare ’ s imaginative genius would not have been sparked without guttenberg ’