Despite their depth and breadth, established political and economic understandings tend to take a somewhat circumscribed view of innovation and development alike. Amidst the many rich subtleties, there tends to be an emphasis on what might be called the ‘scalar’ attributes. For instance, attention often focuses on the pace with which advances take place – frequently involving fears that competitors may proceed more quickly. There is also an understandable preoccupation with the efficiencies with which invested resources yield positive outcomes. There are important concerns over the distributional effects of specific resulting policies and technologies (addressed below). And (in many contexts) increasing priority is attached to the wider social and environmental impacts associated with given forms of innovation and development. Although the metrics in each case may be uncertain, ambiguous and often hotly contested, all these attributes may in principle be expressed in a ‘scalar’ fashion – in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’ on some notional (cardinal, ordinal or variously-valued qualitative) scale.