I'd hate to say the emperor has no clothes, but this does not seem revolutionary in any sense. In fact, there seems to be more counter-examples than examples when we look to the fact that the Middle East, India, China, and North America does not fit the pattern. The Middle East was technologically advanced in the 1500s, China was cited as a counter-example, and there was not much development in North America. In fact, the movement of people and ideas seems to contradict the authors thesis.
This conclusion also fails on closer examination. Superficially, this might work when comparing Europe as a whole vs. Africa as a whole, but Finland is also noted as a previous technological backwater with high GDP now. I'm skeptical of any predictive power of this model.
On the other hand, the author is relatively eloquent. I like the line: "There's a Thomas Edison born every minute. We just have to help them turn the lights on." Just not particularly insightful.