An excellent and timely inquiry on your part.

A good way to think about this is to go deep in history. Each economic era was derived from the prior economic era by integrating the tools of the prior era. For example; hunter-gatherer's chipping stone could be adapted to plow a field which led to the agrarian era. The agrarian era led to the division of labor that created the city-state form of social organization. By the same process of integration of tools came the scientific, industrial, manufacturing, information, and knowledge economies. Much of what we see today is the integration of tools developed in the knowledge economy trying to evolve to an innovation economy.

Things get strange when the integration process is diverted. For example; outsourcing the knowledge economy is failing the innovation economy. Corrupting the financial system fails the integration of the tools. Debt goes to infinity but austerity can only go to zero, etc., fails the social structures required to disseminate ideas.

On the other hand, if you can identify the anomaly of integration and correct it, the integration process can accelerate at an astonishing rate.