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Does every innovation in production technology really help economic prosperity, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries?
If power outages occur frequently, they create resource constraints. Therefore, during a power outage, innovations that depend on electricity can create excess capacity in a production unit because the technology cannot operate without its main resource. In this situation, some advanced technologies may actually become resource-constraint-creating technologies.
Through my recent publication ([https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-65979-3]), I extended this argument and proposed a simple way to identify technology in terms of two categories:
Resource-constraint-creating technology
Resource-constraint-resolving technology
Imagine a machine that depends on a main resource—such as electricity—to function properly.
A solar PV system, for example, can be identified as a resource-constraint-creating technology in certain situations. Solar PV depends on solar light as its main resource. At night, on cloudy days, or when dust, aerosols, or snow reduce solar radiation, the availability of its main resource becomes constrained.
We cannot control darkness, clouds, snowfall, or dust particles in the atmosphere. Therefore, these conditions create a constraint on solar light, which is the main resource required for solar PV technology to generate electricity.
When solar light is constrained, solar PV cannot generate enough power. This can create a power constraint, which can then cause electrical machines and other production technologies to stop functioning.
Then what about wind turbine technology? Can wind turbines be identified as a resource-constraint-resolving technology?
The economic answer can be yes—but with a condition.
Wind turbines can help resolve the power constraint if they are installed in an identified wind corridor where wind is sufficiently continuous, smooth, stable, and available across different weather conditions and seasons. Wind is the main resource required for a wind turbine to generate electricity.
If the wind resource is sufficiently continuous, power generation can become more reliable and less disrupted. As a result, other machines and production activities can continue to function.
Therefore, researchers and scientists should think carefully before creating new advanced production technologies. We should ask whether a new technology, in the real world, will become another resource-constraint-creating technology or a resource-constraint-resolving technology.
Only after considering this resource constraint can economists properly examine whether an innovation for particular new advanced innovated technology can contribute to economic prosperity.