[Question] What previous work has been done on factors that affect the pace of technological development?

Does anyone know of any previous work looking at different factors that might contribute to the pace at which some area or technology develops?

I have had a look at the differential technological progress tag and Michael Aird’s very useful collection of resources on DTD. However, most of these seem more geared towards explaining the concept and its importance, rather than attempting to find levers that we may be able to pull to influence things, which I am more interested in.

A couple of examples of the flavour of work that I’m more interested in are:

  • A 2017 Open Phil report called Some Case Studies in Early Field Growth, which looks at times philanthropists tried to grow a young field.

  • Sections 2.2 and 2.3 of this paper by MIRI (the “speed bumps” and “accelerators” sections), which talks about a few relatively concrete factors that could affect AI development pace.

I’m particularly interested in any work on factors that might apply to the development of a wide range of technologies, and that apply for early field development.

Any suggestions would be really helpful to me, even if they are more loosely related to this area.