The idea of the Product Space can be conceptualized in the following manner: consider a product to be a tree, and the collection of all products to be a forest. A country consists of a set of firms—in this analogy, monkeys—which exploit products, or here, live in the trees. For the monkeys, the process of growth means moving from a poorer part of the forest, where the trees bear little fruit, to a better part of the forest. To do this, the monkeys must jump distances; that is, redeploy (physical, human, and institutional) capital to make new products. Traditional economic theory disregards the structure of the forest, assuming that there is always a tree within reach. However, if the forest is not homogeneous, there will be areas of dense tree growth in which the monkeys must exert little effort to reach new trees, and sparse regions in which jumping to a new tree is very difficult. In fact, if some areas are very deserted, monkeys may be unable to move through the forest at all. Therefore, the structure of the forest and a monkey’s location within it dictates the monkey’s capacity for growth; in terms of economy, the topology of this “product space” impacts a country’s ability to begin producing new goods.

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