Rethinking the Productivity Slowdown: Are Ideas Harder to Find or Harder to Sell?
By
mitchbob
5mo ago· 18 min readenInsight
100/100
Golden Brown
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Summary
The article challenges the popular economic theory that ideas are becoming harder to find, which has been used to explain slowing productivity growth in advanced economies over the past 50 years. Instead, the author argues that ideas might not be harder to find but rather harder to sell or implement in today's economic and social environment. The piece examines productivity growth trends, explores alternative explanations for the slowdown, and questions whether the fundamental problem is idea generation or idea adoption and commercialization.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledFifty years ago, productivity growth in advanced economies began to slow down.
Productivity growth — the component of GDP growth that is not due to increases in labor and capital — is the primary driver of rising incomes.
For half a decade we've been worrying that ideas are getting harder to find. In fact, they might just be harder to sell.
When it slows, so does economic growth as a whole. This makes it an urgent trend to understand.
Unfortunately, the most popular explanation for why productivity growth has slowed is that ideas are getting harder to find.
For half a decade we’ve been worrying that ideas are getting harder to find. In fact, they might just be harder to sell.
