Intangibles

In Kyle’s notes, intangibles appear as a recurring driver in Rekindling US Productivity for a New Era, which links the productivity slowdown to where firms put their investment. The article’s “frontier firms” — the productivity vanguard — invest 2.6x more in technology and intangibles than laggards and attract more skilled talent. The mechanism it describes: these firms “freed their top thinkers, engineers, and creatives to work on their toughest problems, and supported them with technology and other intangibles,” and reaped outsize returns. The wiki ties this to Capital Allocation, since stalling investment in technology and intangibles is named as a core cause of the broader slowdown.

Context: In economics and accounting, intangibles are non-physical assets — software, data, R&D, patents, brand, organizational know-how, and human capital. A large body of “intangible economy” research argues that intangible investment increasingly drives productivity and firm value but is poorly captured by traditional capital-expenditure measures.

Where this appears

• Rekindling US Productivity for a New Era — frontier firms invest 2.6x more in technology and intangibles; stalling intangible investment named as a core driver of the productivity slowdown