ABSTRACT
There is a very clear analytical need to better understand the role that diversity fulfils in advanced industrial economies. The configuration of new technologies that gradually emerges through the current industrial transformation can efficiently sustain a much greater degree of product and skill differentiation because information technologies which are at the heart of the present evolution endow the economic system with much greater flexibility. Scientific and technological progress in areas such as advanced materials and biotechnologies contributes to the understanding of the micro-properties of the matter (whether living or inert) so the potential of new combinations that can feed the industrial system is rapidly increasing as well. Rising living standards in western economies push towards a better matching of these properties to user needs and this much finer adjustment of supply and demand characteristics often creates many micro-markets and areas where standardisation prevailed not long ago. While capital intensity does not seem to decline, information intensity rapidly rises and the ability to transform information and knowledge into market power often takes place through complex strategies of product differentiation.
