This book discusses the timely question of the relationship between political institutions and technological progress. The book argues that technological progress depends on a state’s openness to decentralized innovation combined with the ability to scale up and apply the best inventions throughout society. These arguments are well known to comparative scholars of political regimes focusing on innovation and economic growth, where a core argument has been that democracies often grow faster because they allow for decentralized innovations and exchange of ideas. The book’s core empirical evidence comes from a set of rich historical case studies, among them Imperial China, Britain during the industrial revolution, the Dutch Republic, the Soviet Union and the United States in the 20th century. The key argument of the book is that progress often, almost inevitably, slows down when decentralized experimentation stalls, and that this very often happens even in countries that are at the technological frontier. A takeaway from the book is that we may see slowdowns in the development of AI if the sector keeps centralizing power in a few huge companies.