How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Book of the Year Award 2025

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 worlds largest, most advanced economiesthe United States and Chinahave 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 momentsfrom the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AIFrey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the pastsuch as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britainultimately 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 termfindings 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.