Modern-day inventors–even those in the league of Steve Jobs–will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past. That’s because big ideas are getting harder and harder to find, and innovations have become increasingly massive and costly endeavors, according to new research from economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As a result, tremendous continual increases in research and development will be needed to sustain even today’s low rate of economic growth. SIEPR senior fellow Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford GSB professor of economics by courtesy and co-author of a paper released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, contends that so many game-changing inventions have appeared since World War II that it’s become increasingly difficult to come up with the next big idea. “The thought now of somebody inventing something as revolutionary as the locomotive on their own is inconceivable,” Bloom says.

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