Closing the Global Productivity Gap Through Technology Adoption

The global productivity gap remains one of the most important structural inequalities in the world economy. In 2024, a worker in a low-income economy produced roughly one-twentieth as much output as a worker in a high-income economy, and much of this disparity is explained not by differences in labor effort or capital alone, but by differences in technology, management practices, infrastructure, and the ability to use existing knowledge effectively. This report examines whether technology adoption and diffusion can serve as a principal mechanism for narrowing productivity gaps between countries and whether such convergence contributes to Polycrisis Resilience, defined within the H Heuristics framework as the capacity of societies to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, recover from, and reduce vulnerability to multiple interconnected crises. Using public data covering 217 economies from 1991 to 2024, the report measures the scale and sources of the productivity gap, analyzes historical patterns of technology diffusion, evaluates the relationship between technology adoption and productivity growth, and assesses how productivity contributes to resilience outcomes. The findings indicate that technology adoption can support catch-up growth, but the effect is conditional rather than automatic. While access to technologies such as mobile communications, internet connectivity, digital finance, and renewable energy has expanded rapidly, productive use often remains constrained by deficits in reliable power, skills, finance, competition, institutions, and local adaptive capacity. The evidence suggests that adoption contributes most effectively to productivity growth when these complementary conditions are present. The report argues that closing the productivity gap is a proactive resilience strategy because higher productivity expands the resources available to households, firms, and governments for preparation, protection, adaptation, and recovery. Scenario analysis to 2100 suggests that pathways which successfully convert technology adoption into sustained productivity gains could substantially narrow global productivity disparities, improve coping capacity, and reduce vulnerability across multiple systems. The central conclusion is that technology itself is not scarce; the conditions that enable its effective use are. Strengthening those conditions represents one of the most practical routes through which technology diffusion can enhance global economic convergence and build Polycrisis Resilience.