Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award How 1 000
years of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by
stagnation and even collapse In How Progress Ends Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the
conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human
history stagnation was the norm and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest
most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To
appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward Frey offers a remarkable
and fascinating journey across the globe spanning the past 1 000 years to explain why some
societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. By examining key
historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why
technological shifts have shaped and sometimes destabilized entire civilizations. He explores
why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China the Dutch Republic and
Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge why some modern nations such as Japan
had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation and why planned economies like the Soviet
Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history:
while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies bureaucracy is crucial for
scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change stagnation inevitably
follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and
grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States Europe
China and other economies today. Through a rich narrative that weaves together history
economics and technology How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to
draw the right lessons from the past.
