National and regional economies, like individual enterprises, cannot maintain positions of leadership by conducting business as usual. Nor can they, once they've slipped, regain leadership by imitating the current leader. Imitators seldom if ever catch up to those they imitate. While they are busy incrementally improving their own activities and copying their more innovative competitors, the latter make quantum leaps that increase their leads. To maintain or regain a position of economic dominance, both economies and companies need nothing less than large discontinuities to catapult them ahead.