Carlota Perez

Carlota Perez is a British Venezuelan researcher, specialized in the socio-economic impact of major technical change and the historical context of growth and development.

She is the author of the influential book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002), which focussed on the role that finance plays in the diffusion of technological revolutions.

She is currently Honorary Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) University College London, and at SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex, as well as Adjunct Professor of Technology and Development at the Technological University of Tallinn, Estonia and Academic in residence at Anthemis UK. Her current position as Honorary Professor at SPRU started with a research fellowship in 1983, when she began a long-term collaboration with Professor Chris Freeman. After a two-year appointment at CERF (Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance) at the Judge Business School of Cambridge University from 2002, she remained affiliated until 2014.

She currently teaches in the MPA at IIPP, in the master’s in technology governance and digital transitions at TalTech, in Estonia, and in a post-graduate course at IDS (Institute of Development Studies), Sussex University.

Her career began in the civil service in her country, Venezuela, and has spanned academic research, teaching and consultancy. In the late 1970s, she conducted research at Venezuela’s Central University on the structural causes of the energy crisis. She later worked as a member of a think tank at the Institute of Foreign Trade and, after that, became the founding Director of Technological Development at the Ministry of Industry in the 1980s, where, among other policies to promote innovation and the use of the new information and electronics technologies, she created the first venture capital fund in the country.

She has been a consultant for several Latin American governments and multilateral organisations, such as UNCTAD, UNIDO, CEPAL, the OECD, the Andean Pact and the World Bank. In the mid-1990s, she was an advisor to INTEVEP, the R&D and technology arm of PDVSA, the national oil company in Venezuela. She is regularly invited to lecture at universities around the world. Since the publication of her influential book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of bubbles and Golden Ages, she has frequently been asked as consultant for global corporations (IBM, Cisco, Telefonica, Mondragon, Ericsson, Sogeti, ING Bank and others) and to speak at major business and public sector events. From 2015 to 2016 she was the Chair of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Expert Group for Green Growth and Jobs.

She did her initial degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of Paris VII, and her Master’s –as the initial formulation of her great surges theory– in San Francisco State University. She has since nurtured research links with several European universities. In 2021, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Utrecht. She has received many awards, among them, her book on Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital was chosen as one of the ‘books for the century’ in the Centennial Edition of the journal Foreign Affairs.

Her forthcoming book on the social shaping of technological revolutions should appear towards the end of 2024.

Her current areas of research and interest include:

• The impact of technical change and technological revolutions on society, business and economies

• The roles of finance, markets and governments in shaping technological revolutions and defining their social impact

• The changing windows of opportunity for developing countries

• Sustainability – ‘green growth’ – and its potential as a direction for innovation

• Conditions for natural resource-based innovation and development strategies

• Technology and the potential for overcoming inequality

For further information and access to videos and publications see her personal webpage