1000 Words On Productivity

Nigel Driffield - Professor of International Business and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor - Warwick University
Lead for the Midlands - The Productivity Institute
 
To put it starkly, productivity is your measure of competitiveness, whether at the level of the firm, a sector, a region or the economy, it is the key measure of how effectively one is able to turn inputs into outputs, compared with the competition.
To paraphrase a Nobel-prize winning economist “productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it’s almost everything”. It determines incomes, drives your ability to innovate and drives national competitiveness. High productivity locations also attract high productivity investments from outside.
Much has been written about the apparent productivity puzzle, regarding the apparent productivity slowdown, especially in the richer nations, with a focus on Europe and especially the UK. Much of this seeks to “prove” that oner particular factor is responsible, and as one would expect ...