Bureaucrats, politicians, academics, trade associations and the media are looking at start-ups today with the same fervour and hope with which they looked at the public sector in the 1960s, foreign direct investment in the 1990s, and liberalisation in the last decade: to provide the magic formula that will create jobs for young people and taxes for the government - and also speed up the GDP growth rate.

Together with this, a realisation is growing: that a key to a vibrant start-up culture is "innovation", the processes by which firms master and put into practice product designs and ...