More than half a century ago attention was focused on productivity and technical progress as the decisive factors for growth, demoting the accumulation of physical capital, which had previously been considered the motor of capitalist growth.
9 Today a new conceptual leap is being attempted, moving up the scale of causes and effects; searching, in other words, for what determines productivity and technical progress, and finding it in the ability of a firm, an  9  Schumpeter (1934), Solow (1956, 1957).