The prerequisites for the emergence of industrial revolutions

Global technological challenges facing humanity have increased the importance of understanding the prerequisites for the emergence of industrial revolutions. The purpose of the article is the development and improvement of scientific and theoretical basics of industrial revolutions origins and consideration for their impact on the economic development for a comprehensive understanding of modern industrial and innovation transformations. In order to achieve the objective, the system analysis, induction and deduction methods are used to describe the evolution of economic thinking towards a theoretical and methodological framework; historical, logical and dialectical methods for revealing the relationship between the system of socio-economic relations and technological methods of production; and methods of summarization and classification to determine the patterns of development of industrial revolutions and the drivers that cause it. Based on the systematization of the scientific work of foreign and domestic scientists to study the prerequisites of technological transformations under the influence of industrial revolutions, the article provides a historical analysis of their occurrence. This made it possible to identify the prerequisites for the emergence of industrial revolutions and reveal the main factors that determine the transformation of production methods. In particular, this is a combination of factors: the accumulation of knowledge and the seeking for new methods of processing raw materials at lower costs; concentration of capital; the availability of resources (human, raw-material, and financial ones), and the formation of a unified information space and an innovative institutional system. In this process, emphasis should be laid on creation of an enabling environment in which the transformation of society towards a next industrial revolution can take place. This is accomplished by a certain mechanism of technological transformations, including a set of factors, processes, stages (phases) and resources for their implementation. The following key characteristics of the industrial revolutions are identified: the reduction in the time periods between them; changing role and place of the human; and strengthening the creative and innovative activities of employees. The examination revealed that industrial revolution is not an incidental phenomenon in the development of human civilization, but a natural process conditioned by internal and external factors, and regularities of socio-economic cyclical dynamics. The emergence of the next industrial revolution is accompanied by a change in the technological order, manifested in the alternation of successive generations of devices and technologies as the material basis of human civilization. Deepening scientific approaches to substantiating the conceptual foundations of the emergence of industrial revolutions is the basis for assessing the possibilities and consequences of their impact on socio-economic development, which can facilitate adaptation to technological challenges.